The Wasteland
by Greekhoop
Summary: Killjoys fic. An officer in a rebel army, a living weapon, an orphan, and a sole survivor. The desert is both a trial and a refuge. The city is both a fortress and a prison. Only Poison understands the full extent of what it means to exchange one for the other. Pre-Danger Days and ongoing. Poison/Ghoul, Poison/Kobra.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:** Late to the fandom as usual, but I just couldn't seem to get this out of my head. The first chapter was written as a Yuletide 2011 gift, and is reposted here with some minor edits. Everything that follows is new.

Despite the names and some superficial similarities, my intention was not to write a Bandom AU, but rather to approach DD as if it were its own story with brand new characters.

Brofists to hw_campbell_jnr.

* * *

**Part I – The Highway**

Chapter 1

The Manskinner was furious. This had been his plan from the very start, and he was watching it fall apart before his very eyes. A different person might have been able to foresee this happening, but not the Manskinner, not with his willful, antiquated disconnect from the cold hard truths of this world.

It wasn't that Frank was not sympathetic. He was. But there wasn't much time to think about that when so much of his energy was directed at finding a way to be as far away as possible when the Manskinner's temper eventually erupted.

He'd had some warning that this was coming. As the youngest and newest of the Manskinner's lieutenants, Frank had been given the task of placing the ransom demand earlier that evening. He'd been promoted only three days ago – that, too, had been part of The Manskinner's plan – and even Better Living's thorough and fast-moving spies would not have been able to compile a profile and voice print of him yet. A new agent, someone unknown, would give the impression that the People's Unified Front was bigger and more widespread than it actually was.

The Manskinner had personally dialed the phone they'd taken off the prisoner, and then he had placed it in Frank's hands and stood back and watched, his arms crossed, the crimson tattoo of a phoenix standing out starkly on the back of his left fist.

A blithe and chipper secretary picked up on the second ring. "You've reached Mr. Korse's office. This is Vidal speaking. How may I help you?"

Aware, painfully so, of The Manskinner's dark eyes, like chips of black glass in a marble face, Frank dropped the pitch of his voice as low as it would go – low like the voice of one of the pitiless, gun slinging anti-heroes in the movies he watched – and ground out, "We have Project 5-90."

"I'm very sorry, sir," the secretary soothed. "Mr. Korse isn't available to take your call. May I take a message?"

Frank pressed on, hardly listening. He was grateful for the script The Manskinner had given him, grateful that he'd drilled it in to Frank's head with endless repetition. "In exchange for the safe return of company property, PUF demands the release of the following political prisoners: Emma "Futurist" Coldfield. Edward "Red Line" Welsh—"

"Sir," Vidal interrupted him. "It is strictly against company policy to negotiate with terrorists. I'm terminating this call as per the guidelines on page 68 of the Better Living Employee Handbook. Thank you for calling Better Living Industries, and have a great day."

There was a click, and then silence on the other end of the line. For a long moment, Frank did not move. the Manskinner was still watching him, expectantly, and all at once Frank felt himself spurred into action. He stabbed at the phone, redialing the number. He let it ring a dozen times, but no one picked up, not even an automated message. By the time Frank hung up and dialed again, the number had been disconnected.

The Manskinner had not said anything, but Frank had known all the same that it was a good time to make himself scarce.

There were not many places to which he could escape that wouldn't be construed as running away. The Manskinner had little tolerance for failure, but even less for cowardice. He wouldn't hesitate to bust Frank back down to cannon fodder if he found a good excuse. In a stroke of inspiration, Frank remembered the prisoner.

He'd only seen Project 5-90 for a moment, when the field team had first brought him in, his head lifted at a defiant angle and his face obscured by a blindfold. Silent, compliant, and utterly contemptuous. Dressed in a torn and stained thousand dollar suit of conservative navy blue on white. There'd been a slight hitch in his step, but otherwise he'd seemed unhurt.

Frank had been surprised by how long the Project's hair was. His own was cropped close so he could better move undetected through the city. Even now, he regretted the cutting of it, and he knew that without it his face looked naked and raw. He'd felt a pang of bitter envy when he'd seen the Project's dark curls brushing the tops of his shoulders.

But it was the glimpse he'd caught of that hair that wouldn't get out of his mind.

The Project was being held in one of the upstairs apartments of the PUF safe house, one that had been specially fitted to serve as a cell. The windows had been welded over with sheet metal, and the walls and the floor had been stripped to the bare concrete.

Two guards were posted outside the door. They did not salute – PUF was wary even now of infiltrators, and so they did not officially recognize rank in public – but they moved respectfully out of the way.

The Project was cuffed to the radiator against the rear wall. He was still blindfolded, but his shoes, tie, belt, and cufflinks had been removed. When he heard Frank come in, he shrank back. "Who's there?"

Frank didn't answer right away. He took a few steps across the floor. In the harsh glow of the fluorescent lights, he could see fresh bruises on the Project's face. They'd already been in here working him over, Frank thought. But it would get a lot worse for him before it was through. The Manskinner may have been cheated out of his civil hostage exchange, but he would not lose this opportunity for the uncivilized work of interrogation.

"Please…" the Project said softly. "I can't tell you anymore."

Frank frowned at that. He hadn't come in here to be made to feel guilty; he got enough of that from his boss.

"I didn't think a remorseless assassin would be so pitiful," Frank said dryly, and, to his embarrassment, the Project cringed again.

He had pushed himself back against the radiator, as if he longed to vanish completely between the metal teeth. When Frank crouched down beside him, the Project leapt as if he had been struck.

"No…" The Project said it once, then again. Then he seemed to like it so much that he kept repeating it. His voice was quiet, uninflected. He seemed to know already how futile pleading was, but he was started now and he wasn't about to stop.

"No… no… no…"

Frank clamped a hand over the Project's mouth, choking his voice into silence. He could feel his lips moving still, making strange silent patterns on his palm.

"For fuck's sake," Frank said. "I'm not going to hurt you."

With his free hand, he lifted the blindfold from Project 5-90's face. He wasn't sure what he had expected to find beneath it. Slitted feline pupils, glowing red irises, cybernetic optic censors – none of that would have shocked him. But when the Project stopped blinking against the harsh light, and when he turned his soft, gray, utterly human eyes up to look Frank in the face, it was almost enough to make get up and walk out without ever looking back.

"Who are you?" the Project said.

"Jesus." Frank shook his head. "You're really… it? 5-90? I mean, you are, aren't you?"

"Can you undo the cuffs too? My wrists hurt a lot."

Feeling strangely unsettled, Frank pushed to his feet. "No fucking way. What the shit is this, anyway? You were supposed to be… supposed to be…"

"Look."

At first, Frank thought there was no force in the world strong enough to make him turn back around. But he could feel the Project watching him, still and patient, and he reluctantly forced himself to move. Project 5-90 shook his head, making his hair fall away from his throat. There was a small barcode printed there on the side of his neck, up under the jaw, easy to conceal for cosmetic purposes.

Against his better judgment, Frank bent down and brushed his fingertips over the tattoo. He could feel the steady throb of the Project's pulse, and Frank swallowed dryly before he attempted to speak. "So what?"

"It's been there for a long as I can remember."

"Look, I don't know, like, all the little details or anything. I just know it's not right. It's fucked up, letting something like you run around loose in the world."

"For fifteen years, I didn't know there was anything wrong with me. He told me I was his son. He said that was why. I had to learn the family business…"

"And the family business just happened to be killing people, right?"

The Project's eyes widened. Definitely gray, Frank thought, but there was some green in there, too. Get him out in the sunlight, and who knew what colors would appear.

"I've… killed people," the Project admitted. All at once, he turned away, with a jerk of his head that made his hair whip across his face. "He told me I was his son."

Frank shoved his hands into his jacket pockets. It suddenly seemed that they wouldn't stop trembling. "Why are you telling me all this?"

"I don't know," Project 5-90 said. "I've never met anyone like you before. You seem trustworthy. I want to trust you."

Frank scowled, disliking the sound of that intensely. "There's not much I can do for you. It's all up to him. My boss. What he decides. Unless… Do you want some water? You must be pretty thirsty."

The Project nodded, wide-eyed and unblinking. Frank did not much care for the way it made him feel, but then he should have thought of that before he let himself get this far along. He'd known from the moment he'd laid eyes on Project 5-90's pretty, delicate face; he'd known exactly what it was going to do to him.

Frank unscrewed the lid of the canteen he wore at his belt. When he offered it to the Project's lips, he shrank away.

"Come on," Frank said. "Cut that shit out."

The Project came forward again, tilting his chin up so Frank could pour the water into his mouth. He drank a lot, his throat working in rapid hitching gulps. Before he could think better of it, Frank had reached out with his empty hand and slid his fingers up under the waves of hair that hung down the back of Project 5-90's neck. He could feel the curls winding their way around his wrist, like vines on a trellis.

The Project's eyes shifted slowly, first to follow the approaching hand, and then, when it had dropped out of sight, back to focus on Frank's face. He did not stop drinking, not until the canteen was empty. Frank moved to set it on the ground, but his hand felt numb, his palm slick with sweat, and the canteen slipped out of his grip, clattering brightly to the floor.

Frank drew away at the sound. "Shit. You're…"

He didn't dare finish that thought. Even on his best days, Frank was too unreliable, too undisciplined, to live up to the Manskinner's rigorous standards. He didn't need this shit on top of all that. He didn't need to make things more complicated than they already were.

But sometime between when he turned to find the dropped canteen and when he straightened back up so he could get to his feet, Frank lost track of himself. His hand went back to tangle in the Project's hair, clutching more tightly than before, holding him still as Frank lunged forward to capture his lips in an awkward, crushing kiss.

Project 5-90 went rigid beneath him. Frank heard the handcuffs click against the radiator as he pulled at them. He didn't care. Didn't care if the Project thought he was insane, didn't care if he actually was insane. For a brief, disorienting moment, he didn't even care if the Project didn't want it.

When Frank finally pulled away, it was only because he needed to catch his breath. Project 5-90 was staring at him with wide eyes that seemed to simultaneously express everything and hide all. His lips were a little darker than they had been, as if they'd been bruised.

"I'm sorry," Frank gasped. "It's just that you're… Do you want me to be sorry?"

The Project did not make any reply, but Frank thought that he saw a hint of color come in to his bloodless cheeks. He was blushing, Frank realized, and he could have laughed at the absurdity of it. Project-5-90, genetically engineered instrument of close-quarters combat, was fucking blushing.

"I don't even know your name," Frank said.

"Excuse me?"

"Your name. You said Korse treated you like his son. He didn't just call you 5-90 all the time, did he?"

"Oh, that." The Project hesitated momentarily, as if thinking over what to say. "He called me Gerard. My name's Gerard."

"Cool," Frank said. "Pretty name."

Slowly, Project 5-90 – Gerard – lifted his eyes once more. His tongue flicked out, making a slow circuit of his lips, as if tasting them for any residue Frank's kiss had left behind. "If you let me go," he said quietly. "Then maybe I can do something for you."

That was all it took to break the spell. Frank lurched away, viscerally repulsed by those words, that soft coaxing tone.

"I didn't mean that," he said, stumbling to his feet. He snatched up Gerard's blindfold from where he had dropped it on the floor, knowing that he was going to have to replace not but having no clue how he was ever going to bring himself to get that close. "I can't let you go. Ever. And I don't want anything from you if that's the only reason…"

"Then they'll kill me," Gerard sighed. "They'll hurt me again…"

"That's not my problem," Frank said resolutely.

With a swift, decisive motion, he replaced the blindfold. It seemed he could think more clearly without Gerard's gray eyes tracking his every move. "I'm sorry I have to do this. You don't seem half as bad as I know you are."

Gerard made no reply, and Frank was glad for that. He ran a hand over the front of his clothes, giving the hem of his shirt a tug as if to set everything in order. Though the guards at the door did not spare him a glance when he went out, Frank felt certain that they must have known everything. He must have worn the truth as a brand upon his brow, for how could he have done what he had done and discovered what he now knew without being somehow fundamentally changed because of it?

* * *

That night, Frank lay in his bunk and did not sleep. The Manskinner was still upstairs with Gerard, still trying to extract some information from him, anything at all that would make up for the time and effort they had expended on his capture.

He'd been there earlier that day when the Manskinner had given the orders to his driver: In the morning, he had said, take it out into the desert and shoot it. The last thing we need is another fucking mouth to feed.

At that moment, Frank had known what he was going to do. The entire plan, the execution of it and the aftermath that would follow, had leapt fully formed into his head. When the time came to carry it out, he did not have to alter or expand upon a single thing.

It was after midnight when he heard footsteps on the stairs. He counted four sets of them: The Manskinner, Pravda, and the two guards from the cell upstairs. It must have been bad, Frank thought, if he was dismissing them now. Briefly, he wondered if they hadn't killed Project 5-90 outright, but he brushed the notion aside quickly. He needed Gerard alive, if he was ever going to have the nerve to go through with it.

Silently, Frank slipped out from under the blankets. He was fully dressed except for his boots. These, he picked up and carried with him out into the hall before putting them on. Stepping carefully, mindful of creaking boards, he crept up the stairs to the second floor.

Gerard was where Frank had left him, still blindfolded and cuffed to the radiator. He was sitting on the concrete floor, his knees crooked up and his face buried against them as if he were trying to sleep.

His head snapped up when he heard the door open, and he turned wildly, looking for a gap in the blindfold where he could see out. But he didn't make a sound until Frank had shut the door behind himself, so carefully that the latch made no sound when it fell back into place.

Frank was quiet for a moment, looking him over. One of Gerard's cheeks had been stained by a bruise, and a steady rivulet of blood trickled from his lower lip. More blood under his nose, but he was conscious and alert, and he did not hold himself as if anything were broken. He must have been tough, Frank thought, feeling a strange new fear take root in him. The Manskinner threw a hell of a punch when he had violence on his mind, which he practically always did.

"It's me," Frank said.

"What do you want?"

"To see you."

Gerard bared his bloodstained teeth in a painful expression that may have been intended as a smile. "Better take a good long look."

It took Frank two long strides to cross the floor to Gerard's side. He dropped to his knees and seized him by the scruff of the neck and kissed him, fiercely and mercilessly, like he had kissed him earlier that day. This time was different, though. This time, Gerard put his head back and met him, kissing him back. Frank could feel little groans of pleasure vibrating between their tangled mouths, but he could not say for certain which one of them they came from.

Frank swung one leg over, straddling Gerard's lap. His hands clutched at fistfuls of Gerard's suit coat and shirt, wadding them mindlessly in his fists until he brushed against a patch on Gerard's ribs that made him flinch.

"Sorry," Frank breathed. He didn't want to stop, not even long enough to talk. He leaned back just enough to get the words out, keeping his forehead pressed against Gerard's. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"It doesn't hurt much," Gerard said, and then he surged forward into another kiss.

Frank did not care about anything else. Not the Manskinner, not his plan, not the possibility of being caught. He wanted only this mouth, this body, this strange and enigmatic man. His fingers fumbled with the buttons of Gerard's shirt, flicking some open and tearing others off as he clawed his way down to the skin underneath.

"How are you doing this to me?" he groaned, plunging his hands into the folds of Gerard's clothing, pawing at him.

"I don't know," Gerard panted. "I don't…"

Frank could feel the hard ridge of Gerard's cock digging into his thigh. He pulled down Gerard's zipper and fished it out. When he squeezed it, working his fist slowly from the base up to the tip, he could feel an erratic pulse beating against his palm.

Gerard shuddered, his head falling back to knock hollowly against the radiator. "Oh, God…"

Running his tongue over the roof of his mouth, trying to work up some spit, Frank lowered his head and pressed his lips to the tip of Gerard's cock. He could taste the thin salty pre-come already beading on the tip, smearing over his mouth as he kissed and licked and teased. He opened his mouth and took Gerard in once, twice, feeling his cock nudged up against the back of his throat.

Assuming he was slick enough, Frank moved back up so he was sitting astride Gerard's hips. He unbuckled his belt and pushed his pants down over his hips.

"Gerard…" he murmured, stroking a lock of damp hair out of his face.

"Now," Gerard breathed. "Do it now."

Frank gripped the base of Gerard's cock in one hand and lowered himself down onto it. There was a momentary sharp, stretching pain, but it was nothing Frank couldn't handle. Nothing he hadn't known about when he signed on.

Beneath him, Gerard gasped and moaned, his body arching up. He pulled against his handcuffs, making the chain rattle, as if he had forgotten he was restrained. He pressed desperate kisses to Frank's cheek, his temple, his throat, but with the blindfold in place, Gerard had little luck finding his lips.

"Let me touch you," he said, his voice taking on the firm tone of one accustomed to being obeyed. "I want to touch you."

Frank rolled his hips so he was sitting forward a little, feeling the shift of Gerard's cock inside him. Gerard threw his head back, straining against the cuffs, making the radiator rattle against the wall. Frank reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the little round handcuff key. For a moment, he was struck by the enormous absurdity of it. It was crazy to even think of letting this man – this creature – run around free, when Frank knew that Project 5-90 could have killed him in an instant, without hesitation or remorse.

But he didn't care. One way or another, Frank thought, he was getting out of here tonight.

With a savage stabbing motion, he thrust the key into the cuff on Gerard's right wrist. As soon as he had unlocked it, Gerard's hand slipped free. The handcuffs made a disconsolate rattle as he jerked them free of the radiator.

Before Frank could react, Gerard had grabbed him around the waist. He dug his fingers in, cutting bruises into Frank's skin, but Frank did not even have time to gasp before Gerard was lifting him, moving with him as he flipped Frank over on his back.

A single strangled, "Motherfucker!" escaped Frank's lips as he landed on the concrete floor with Gerard on top of him. For all his fatalistic bravado, he had not really wanted to die like this. To be found in the morning, after Project 5-90's escape had been discovered, with his pants around his ankles and his dick still at half-staff…

"It's okay," Gerard murmured, and Frank froze where he was. Gerard hooked an arm under Frank's knees, pushing them up to his chest; Frank watched breathlessly as he moved above him, feeling his way. He was still wearing the blindfold, and without his deep eyes there seemed to be something missing from his face.

With a twitch of his hips, Gerard was within him once more, and Frank felt all the strength rush out of him. He half-raised himself, then fell back against the floor. His hands clutched at Gerard's shoulders, as if they were the only thing keeping him anchored, the only thing keeping him from flying apart.

He knew he must have cried out, because Gerard bent over him, leaning close to his ear and whispering, "Hush… hush…"

The rough fabric of Gerard's blindfold scraped up against his cheek, and Frank felt so unbearable sensitive that it seemed to rub his skin raw. He felt that with each certain and steady thrust, with each touch of his long-fingered hands, Gerard was driving him on, on, to some unsure future. Some time yet to pass, that had not yet been decided, or even dreamed.

He came hard, his hips bucking up against Gerard's body, painting both of their stomachs with ropes of semen. Gerard followed him down.

For what seemed a long time, Frank lay still, watching the stars revolve behind his closed eyelids. Gerard moved first, lifting himself up on his hands. He slipped off his blindfold, and he and Frank opened their eyes at the same time.

Frank was deeply conscious of Gerard studying his face intently, and deeply conscious of himself making a very careful study in return. All at once, he remembered what he had come here to say.

"Will you run away with me?"

"What?" Gerard said, though he did not sound baffled or bewildered.

"I hate this place. I can't stand it anymore. I feel like I'm smothering here, little by little, so slowly that when the time finally comes for me to die, I won't even know it for what it is. I won't even remember how to fight it."

"Where could we go?"

"To the desert," Frank said instantly. "Out there, people are still free."

"It's dangerous."

"I don't care. It's dangerous here, too. And maybe I'd prefer a senseless, anonymous death at the hands of SCARECROW then for the Manskinner to finally get around to cooking up a nice noble suicide mission for me."

"I understand," Gerard said. He pushed to his knees, tucking himself back into his pants and buttoning up. "We'll need a car."

"I'll steal one." Now Frank, too, was climbing to his feet. He felt renewed in purpose, so much so that for a moment he wondered why his legs felt so shaky and weak.

All at once, he remembered, and he looked down into Gerard's upturned face.

"I trust you, you know," he said.

"I know. I trust you, too."

Frank offered his hand. Gerard took it and stood up. Together, they went out, side-by-side into the waiting night.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

They hit the road doing 90. By the time the sun rose, they had left Battery City far behind. Its glass towers gleamed like pillars of salt in the rearview. Receding and receding and receding, until they slipped at last beneath the demarcation of the horizon.

Frank felt, for the first time, the knot of tension between his shoulderblades begin to ease.

He half turned, just enough to see Gerard out of the side of his eye. He was alert, steady; his eyes skewed into slits against the rising sun. Both of his hands were on the wheel, and, though he held it loosely, his knuckles still showed stark and white. A tangle of wires spilled out of the ignition beneath his wrist. Frank had done the hotwiring job, but then he had turned the driver's seat over. Good motorists were rare since the gas rationing of the war years, but Gerard seemed at home behind the wheel. Just like a little rich boy with a little rich boy's hobby, Frank thought. He managed to muster up a little of the old contempt, the old self-righteousness, but it quickly died away.

"Are you tired?" Frank asked. It occurred to him that neither of them had spoken in a long time.

Gerard's lips moved, making a subtle frown. "I'm all right."

"It embarrasses you when I ask you things like that, doesn't it?" When Gerard didn't answer, Frank laughed. "That's because you're such a big tough guy."

"You're flirting with me," Gerard said mildly.

Frank turned away, making himself watch the wasteland instead. "I was just making conversation."

"I don't mind."

"You don't mind conversation?" Frank said.

"No, I suppose I don't."

Outside, the desert slid by. It was not the dead land that Frank had expected it would be. Scrub grass grew in the ditch along the side of the highway, studded intermittently with a knobby Joshua tree, twisted and strange like Martian cactus. Only the power lines were without life. They stood in listless disrepair, no longer resembling sentinels or soldiers but only awkward unwanted reminders of the world that had gone by.

"I can't believe I gave up indoor plumbing for this," Frank said. "We're going to be shitting behind sand dunes and wiping our asses with Gila monsters from here on out."

Gerard said nothing. Frank shifted around in his seat to look at him. "Well?"

"What?"

"Don't you have an opinion on that?"

"No. I don't have any opinion on that."

He didn't once look away from the road. Though Frank watched him for a long time, Gerard did not turn or hesitate or even blink. It seemed to Frank that he could see a terrible and inexhaustible will intermingled with the delicate lines of Gerard's pretty face. He would keep going for a long time now, simply out of momentum. When the rest of them were nothing but a handful of forgotten dust, Gerard would still be pressing on, calmly and steadily, toward that far horizon.

Frank felt his heart beat faster. A strange and unfamiliar fear gripped him.

He reached out, setting a hand over Gerard's and pinning it to the wheel. He could feel the cold brittleness of his fingers in spite of the growing heat of the day.

"Let's stop up here," Frank said.

"Stop?" Gerard replied, as if he did not understand.

"I gotta piss. Besides, we should take a look around. Figure out where we're going."

"East," Gerard said quietly. "We're going east."

But he took his foot off the accelerator and eased over onto the shoulder. Flipped the turn signal and everything, Frank noticed, with something that was a mixture of amusement and irritation. He hopped out, and picked his way through the tumbleweeds and cactus, his back to the car. He had the impression that he could think more clearly without Gerard distracting him, but as he unzipped his pants and stared out at the hazy, bluish mountains in the distance, he was not thinking about anything in particular.

A flash of movement in the grass caught his attention as a huge grayish jackrabbit ambled out from the shadow of a rock. It sat up on its hind legs, bringing its pinkly twitching nose to the level of Frank's hip. His stomach curdled in disgust: the thing was the size of a goddamn bulldog. The rabbit cocked its head in his direction, revealing a knot of naked flesh wedged between its ears, sprouting a mass of purple tentacles that coiled around the rabbit's head like blind snakes.

Frank shoved his cock back into his jeans and bent down, keeping one nervous eye on the creature. The rabbit watched him with dull animal curiosity but no fear. It twitched its pink nose, revealing a pair of orange over-long incisors. Frank retrieved a stone and threw it. It struck the ground near the rabbit's stubby tale and kicked up a cloud of red dust. The rabbit loped off without haste or concern.

"Fuck," Frank said aloud, wiping his palms on his jeans. His voice seemed very loud to his own ears. "Shit. Gross."

He hurried back to the car. Gerard had come around the front of it and was leaning against the hood staring into the distance. There was a cigarette clamped between his lips, looking alien and out of place against the bow of his mouth. Frank circled in front of him and Gerard's gaze dropped to his face. For the first time, his steady eyes seemed to flicker as he drew Frank into focus.

"You smoke?" Frank asked.

"Sometimes."

"Sometimes?"

"Sometimes I do." Gerard plucked the cigarette away from his lips and breathed a plume of blue smoke. "Are you ready to go?"

Frank felt his stomach wrench tight. He reached out, capturing the cigarette as Gerard tried to return it to his mouth. He took a jittery drag, tasting only ashes as he did, not knowing why he had expected anything else.

"You all right?"

"Me?" Gerard said.

Frank stroked the backs of his fingers along Gerard's jaw where his skin was blackened by a bruise. He slid the pad of his thumb along his lower lip to the vertical slit where it had split open, and bled, and scabbed over.

"You got worked over pretty good," Frank said.

Gerard tested the inside of his lip with his tongue. "Your friend hits hard," he conceded.

"The Manskinner?" Frank shook his head. "I wouldn't really call him a friend. But he does hit hard."

"I'm fine," Gerard said quietly.

"Are you sure? Your eye is pretty swollen…"

"I'm fine."

Frank withdrew his hand slowly. "Listen, if I've done something to piss you off—"

He didn't get a chance to finish. Gerard's hand came up his back, fingertips skating along his spine. He caught a fistful of Frank's hair and jerked him forward. Frank stumbled, off balance, and landed hard against Gerard's chest. His face was tilted up, and Gerard covered his mouth with a bruising kiss.

Frank moaned, twisting in Gerard's grip. He didn't know how he'd gotten here; Gerard had moved too fast for him to track. Inhumanly fast, Frank thought, feeling a barb of fear embed itself in his heart. There was something here, something telling him to be wary, but Frank did not pay it any attention. Later he could regret it, but for now he had this moment.

He pushed himself up against Gerard's body, feeling him move to fit them together. Gerard slid a leg up between his thighs, and Frank ground his hips against it, feeling cock twitch and strain inside his jeans.

Then he tasted blood, metallic and bitter. It flooded his mouth, and Frank pulled back, gagging.

The gash on Gerard's lip had split open, and a ribbon of fresh blood ran down his chin, bright against his pale skin. Frank passed the back of his hand over his mouth and it came away with a red smudge on it.

"Shit," he said. "Sorry."

"It's all right," Gerard replied. He had not reached to staunch the flow of blood at all. A few drops fell from the point of his chin and stained the lapels of his torn and dirty suit coat.

"Let me…" Frank fumbled in his back pocket and pulled out his bandana. Folding it over, he pressed it to the cut on Gerard's mouth. Gerard watched him over the crease in the cloth, his gray eyes strangely detached, as if they were windows onto a different face.

Frank dabbed up the blood as best he could, though it had already stained Gerard's lips a feral crimson color.

"There," Frank said. He laughed nervously. "Red's a good color on you, you know."

Gerard watched him in silence for a moment. He lifted his neglected cigarette and took a drag. It had nearly all burned down now, and when Gerard touched it to his mouth, a long column of ash crumbled from the end of it.

He flicked the butt away into the desert.

"I'll keep that in mind."

* * *

They drove through the morning until the sun was high, breathing the blue fumes from the car's aged air conditioning. The heat pooled on the asphalt in front of them, giving the illusion of water, oases that never came.

With the sun at its zenith, they passed a ruined suburb, glittering, menaced by the desert, in the valley just off the highway. The signs along the side of the road had all been torn out; the off ramps had been severed ruthlessly, like cut arteries. They passed beneath an orphaned, inaccessible overpass, caked with fading mandalas of graffiti.

"Do you think anyone still lives there?" Frank said

"This area is under quarantine," Gerard answered. He put his foot down hard on the peddle, and they left the gutted track houses and strip malls behind.

"Quarantine for what?"

"Vermin."

"What…?" Frank started to say. Then he stopped. He turned in his seat, looking out the back window. The Pegasus sign that marked the last gas station at the edge of town was quickly dipping out of sight.

Frank felt his throat tighten, his pulse surging. He could see it clearly: the heavy machinery rolling up the highway in the blue hour before dawn. The vehicles were stark white in the last of the moonlight, stamped with the Better Living logo. They laid into the roads, chopping the asphalt and concrete pillars into segments, carrying them away as if they could be reassembled. He saw it so clearly he might as well have been standing amongst them, the few residents of the suburb who came to stand in their pajamas at the edges of their regular and well-maintained lawns and watch, with bemused complacency, as the signs that might have said _Rattlesnake Run_ or _Sweetwater Creek_ or _Gold Dust Trail_ were uprooted, as if, without a name, the suburb might all the sooner cease to exist.

Without the roads, there would have been no escaping that place save through the desert, braving the heat, the sun, the creatures that lived out there beneath the sand. If anyone were brave enough, or resourceful enough, or strong enough to attempt it, they were not the sort of person who would live in a planned suburb of Battery City. Better Living had known as much, had banked on it, and they had not been wrong.

"Jesus," Frank muttered. He shook his head violently, but the image would not dissipate. "Fucking christ."

"Is something wrong?" Gerard said.

"You! You're what's wrong!"

Gerard did not reply. He tapped the brake and brought the car to a silky halt. He gave the tangle of wires below the ignition a tug, cutting the engine, and then he turned, without a word, making no sound at all, not even the creak of upholstery leather or the whisper of fabric.

Frank said nothing, could say nothing. He felt that he was choking, that his lungs were filled with ashes, with smoke the same shade of gray as the gray of Gerard's eyes.

"Have I upset you?" Gerard reached out to touch him, and Frank flinched away.

"You're a monster. You're all monsters."

"Shh," Gerard said. He moved again, slowly, and this time Frank let him pass the backs of his fingers along his cheek. He felt his balls draw up taut against his body in helpless arousal, and he squeezed his eyes shut.

"I wish I'd let them kill you."

"You don't mean that," Gerard said patiently, and Frank knew that he was right. Whatever terrible power Gerard might hold over him now, it was only because Frank had permitted it, invited it.

He forced himself to open his eyes, and Gerard began to withdraw his hand. Frank caught hold of it and pulled it to his mouth. He pursed his lips against the vertebrae of Gerard's knuckles as if he meant to kiss them, but he did not.

"What are we going to do?" he said at last. "I thought, once we got here…"

"You thought it would be easy, didn't you?"

"Easier than this. I thought it would all make sense."

Gerard sighed, gently extracting his hand from Frank's grip. He turned so he was facing the highway again, planting both hands on the steering wheel. By now, the AC had been off for long enough that the heat had begun to close in on them. Frank could feel it tightening around him like a fist. He watched a bead of sweat form in the pit of Gerard's temple, watched it trickle slowly down his cheek.

"You don't know where we are, do you?" Frank said quietly. "You have no idea where you're taking us."

"Away," Gerard replied. "As far away as I can."

Something in those words gave Frank pause. He felt a memory trying to surface, something he ought to have understood but, stubbornly, could not.

"Away from what?" he asked.

"That place."

"Away from what, Gerard?"

He saw the muscles in Gerard's jaw tighten subtly, saw his throat move as if his mouth was suddenly dry. Absently, he ran the tip of his tongue over the cut on his lower lip, exploring it.

"Someone's coming," he said at last.

"What…?"

It took Frank a while to see it too, but eventually a dark shape emerged out of the heat that obscured the road. It was a vehicle, coming toward them at a good speed.

"It's about time," Frank said, but he reached inside his jacket and touched the butt of his pistol, assuring himself of its presence.

Gerard did not seem to hear him. With a deft movement of his fingers, he twisted the ignition wires together, and the car roared to life. He put it in reverse and hit the gas so hard that Frank was thrown back in his seat. The tires shrieked as Gerard brought his foot down hard on the brake, simultaneously twisting the wheel so the car swung around, facing now back in the direction from which they had come.

He pushed the gas pedal to the floor, still holding the car steady, as the speedometer inched up past 100, past 110, and beneath the hood something groaned and then the whole chassis began to vibrate.

"What the fuck?" said Frank, but Gerard didn't answer.

They passed the suburb again, but this time it seemed no more than a dark blur against the landscape. Frank dared a glance behind them, but the car Gerard had fled from was long out of sight.

"Stop," Frank said. "Stop now."

But Gerard did not even look at him. Frank made a grab for one of his hands, clenched in a pale vice around the wheel, hoping that the contact might snap him out of it. Gerard jerked away, wrenching the wheel hard to the left. The car tried to spin out, but he brought it back under control, and then there was a sickening drop as they left the highway and came down hard on the unpaved access road that ran parallel to it.

A spume of gravel erupted behind the car. Gerard did not slow, even on the dirt, and Frank could hear the ping of small pebbles, like buckshot, against the sides of the car. A rock hit the window on his side with a sound like a skull cracking, and a spiderweb appeared in the glass.

"Fucking stop!" Frank said again, his voice pitched strangely now. "He's gone. What the fuck is wrong with you?"

Gerard turned, just barely, and looked at him with flat incomprehension. With eyes like the dead doll-eyes they might give a machine, like windows that opened upon some cold and distant abyss.

Neither of them was watching the road, and so Gerard did not even touch the brake before they went over the cattle crossing. Both the front tires blew, the hubcaps exploding off in either direction. Frank heard a mournful metallic wail as the rims hit the road. He felt a moment of weightlessness – he would learn later that the car had rolled – and then the sound of crumpling metal that seemed to come from somewhere far away, to be happening to someone else.

Then, nothing.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Slowly, slowly, a voice came to him out of the darkness. It was quiet and without inflection, a little bit prim, like a good schoolboy reciting his lessons.

"…thirteen-thousand-seven-hundred-fifty-one, thirteen-thousand-seven-hundred-fifty-seven, thirteen-thousand-seven-hundred-fifty-nine, thirteen-thousand-seven-hundred-sixty…"

The voice broke off abruptly, and it seemed that Frank could hear the click of saliva working its way up into a dry throat. "You're finally awake."

Frank opened his eyes, and was seized with a disorienting sense of unreality, as if he had slipped back into a dream.

The room was bare, with cinderblock walls and a concrete floor. Dust motes drifted in the wedges of light that slanted through the cracks in the boarded up windows.

A cell, Frank thought, and the surge of panic that followed was enough to make him raise himself on his elbows. Indigo lights exploded behind his eyes, and pain boiled to the surface as if through a crack in his skull. And somehow, in spite of that, he felt himself aware, uncannily aware, of the soft tread of Gerard's boots as he came around the side of his bed. His freshly-dyed hair was the color of rust, until he passed through one of the beams of light and it burst, like an alarm, into bright lacquered red.

Gerard sat down, and the canvass cot on which Frank lay creaked beneath his weight. His new leather jacket creaked too, when he reached to touch the spot on the side of Frank's head, the source of all his agony.

"Take it easy," he said quietly. "You've been asleep for a while."

Frank did not ask how long, but he was gripped by a sudden terror, as if "a while" did not mean hours, or days, but rather years. Decades. As if this man with him now were not Gerard at all, but his descendant, a son or grandson with an achingly familiar face but all else fundamentally changed.

Then, with careful deliberation, Gerard removed his gloves, setting them aside with a practiced smoothing of his hand, and in that moment Frank recognized him. Beneath the new hair, and the new clothes, was the same refinement and breeding, the polish and poise that Frank had found both repulsive and compelling.

With careful fingers, Gerard began to unwind the bandage around Frank's head. A little blood had soaked through the gauze underneath, and Frank felt the edges catching as Gerard worked them free. The side of his head felt swollen and unsupportable, as if a piece of his skull had been removed, leaving only a delicate membrane of skin stretched over the darkness beneath.

"Am I… all right?" he asked quietly, carefully. His fear must have shown plainly on his face, though, because Gerard smiled.

"Three stitches."

"Oh…" Frank watched him drop the stained gauze into a pile beside the bed, and he felt his stomach turn over weightlessly. He had never been afraid of the sight of blood before.

Gerard's head was bent, and his red hair hung over his face, stiff with sweat. He'd cut it too, Frank thought; hacked off three inches with unimpassioned efficiency. He did not miss it at all – no, not Gerard – but Frank could not help but feel a pang of loss for the way the half-curls had once boiled around his collar.

He reached out impulsively and touched Gerard's hair. The dye was still so fresh it left a kiss of red on his fingertips. "You look…"

"Different?" Gerard said.

"Yeah. Different."

"It was time for a change." Gerard folded a clean piece of gauze over in his hands, spit on it, and began to clean the blood from Frank's temple. "I never wanted a change until now."

"Gerard—" Frank began, but Gerard moved fast at the sound of that name, clamping a hand over his mouth.

"No, don't call me that. A new face deserves a new name. That's what he told me. He said, it's just a name. Going by your real one will only weigh you down. Practically no one does that anymore, he said."

His hand had slipped a little, enough that Frank could brush it away from his mouth. "Who do you mean? Gerard…"

"Poison," Gerard said sharply.

"What?"

"That's my name now. Party Poison. I won't answer to the old one, never again."

Frank was quiet for a long moment. Then he started to laugh. The sound pinballed off his bruised ribs and made his head throb. His parched throat grated and burned. All at once, he stopped.

"Stupid name," he said, his voice a bruised whisper.

Behind the curtain of his hair, Gerard – Poison – was smiling. "I know."

"Fuck it, do I get a stupid name too?"

"You'll have to come up with it on your own," Poison said. He ran his thumb along the stitches in Frank's temple to make sure they were holding, then he stood up. He retrieved his gloves, and pulled them back on. "I've done all I can for you."

Frank looked up at him boldly. "And whatever I pick, you're going to call me that, right? And I'll never answer to the old name again?"

"That's right," Poison said.

"What else is going to change?" Frank said.

Poison pursed his lips. "Nothing."

"Nothing at all?"

When Poison didn't answer, Frank sighed and dropped his eyes. "Shit, sorry. We don't even know each other, do we? I mean, sometimes I feel like I do, but most of the time I just think you're crazy and no one could ever really know you. Not if they hung around you for years and years."

"You think I'm crazy?" Poison said quietly.

"I don't know. What was that bullshit with the car earlier? You wouldn't listen to me. It didn't even seem like you heard."

"I'd never crashed before," Poison said. "When you were asleep, I came in here to tell you that. And to apologize. But once I started talking to you, I couldn't stop. I didn't have very much to say, but even when I ran out, I just kept talking. And I thought, how strange that I would want to talk to you when you were asleep. But I knew that was exactly why I could talk at all. I could say a great deal to you, as long as I knew you couldn't hear me."

His eyes slid out of focus momentarily, as if they looked now out over a great distance. Then, abruptly, the distance closed in and he was watching Frank's face once more.

"Then you woke up," he finished softly.

Frank said nothing. After a moment, Poison drew the heels of his motorcycle boots together in a kind of military salute, and turned to go.

"You've got a lot of secrets, you know," Frank said after him.

Poison paused in the doorway. He set a hand against the frame, as if to steady himself. "Don't you?"

"I don't know. Maybe. But I'm not like you."

* * *

After Poison had gone, Frank lay awake trying to get his head straight, but his thoughts were not like an orderly regiment of inquiries, marching forward in neat rows, ready for his inspection. Instead, they twisted and writhed in his mind, a black wind of questions that obliterated everything it touched. He was left feeling exhausted and empty and soberly hopeless.

All at once, he thought of the Manskinner who had once drawn him aside and said to him, _You're not smart, Frank. You never will be. So don't waste your time trying to think things through. When you need to know something, you'll know it in your gut_.

But the only thing his gut was telling him now was that he hated the goddamn Manskinner, who had always been at his most intolerable when he was giving advice, trying to be fucking helpful.

He had never really wanted to help anyone, and they had all known it, the Manskinner most of all. He had only wanted to interfere, to touch everything, influence it, draw it under his sway. None of them had meant anything to him, because the Manskinner hated all the imperfect individuals that made up humanity, loving and fighting only for Humanity as an untouchable ideal.

Kill all the Fascists. That had been the proposition and the promise, simple and pure, that the Manskinner had made them. But if he had the chance, he'd kill everything else, too. Burn it all, and then, without second thought or backwards glance, throw himself on the pyre. Give the world back to the sea turtles and cockroaches and sharks. That was The Manskinner's dream, and Frank no longer wanted any part of it.

He knew exactly what had changed; he just didn't want to admit it.

Frank jerked upright suddenly, as if he had been kicked. His head throbbed, but he barely felt it. He grabbed his shirt from where it sat, neatly folded, beside the bed. There was a little blood caked on the collar, and Frank scratched at it with his nail, did not succeed in loosening it, and at last pulled the shirt over his head.

He got up. He was stiff, but steady on his feet; he didn't feel any particular pain. For the first time, he looked around to get his bearings.

The room he had at first taken for a cell was in fact a disused storage room, old but swept and clean. Poison had not shut the door when he left, and when Frank went near it he could hear the low murmur of voices from without. He counted four: one that he recognized as Poison, and three others – two men and a woman – that he did not know.

He touched the butt of his pistol, reassuring himself that it was there, that it had not left him even in unconsciousness, and then he went out.

There were not four as he had first thought, but five, only one had kept silent the entire time. They had gathered in mismatched chairs by the dusty, ancient bar that ran the length of the room. Only Poison was standing, his hip cocked against the bar, arms folded over his chest. The beads of sweat that ran down his throat were tinged red from his hair dye. He looked like a prince presiding over his subjects.

One by one, they turned and noticed him there. Not one of them spoke, and when Frank tried to the words came out rough and broken.

"I was getting pretty thirsty," he rasped.

It was enough to spur them to movement. A slight man with silvery blond hair uncoiled from one of the battered backless chairs and got to his feet. He was dressed in a black suit – much faded by the sun but otherwise new-looking – and in his hands he held a round black hat. This he set decorously down on the seat of the chair before coming forward. Frank wasn't tall by any stretch, but he found he did not have to incline his head upward at all to meet the man's pale, colorless eyes.

He took Frank's chin in one hand and tilted his head so he could see the stitches. His fingers were surprisingly cold, unpleasantly so, and Frank had to steel himself so he didn't flinch away.

"It was a mercy that you were spared," the man said, running the fingertips of his free hand over the cut on Frank's temple. "By His grace…"

"Are you some kind of a doctor or something?" Frank muttered.

"A _preacher_," Poison said quickly, contemptuously, but Frank did not miss the way his eyes flashed, the way his lips twisted into an ironic smile. Out from under his rich daddy's thumb and finally free to say all the dirty words he wanted, Frank thought. But even Better Living had been right about some things: only crazy people believed in god anymore.

"Prophet," he stranger said mildly. He finished his inspection and stepped back, bowing his head.

"I don't really know the difference," Frank admitted.

"I make ready the Way for his Earthly Reign. I foretell of the Seven Seals broken and the Seven Trumpets sounded and the Seven Bowls poured."

"Oh," Frank said. "That sounds cool."

The self-proclaimed prophet was watching him closely now, as if he expected Frank to say more. Poison was watching him too, as if he thought the two of them might, at any moment, burst into song for his amusement.

"His name's Prester John," the woman said, mercifully breaking the silence. "He forgets sometimes that there are people out there who haven't heard his sales pitch a hundred times already."

The prophet dipped his head, not quickly enough to hide a smile. "Though the Word falls on deaf ears, Sister, it is spoken just the same." He turned sharply, and retrieved his black hat, pulling it down squarely on his head.

"You're going?" Poison said.

"My Call continues," Prester John replied, not looking at him. "You will see me again, when the Spirit thirsts."

He went out, though the rusty screen door that hard stood untold seasonless years. The hinges squeaked, and a coil of reddish dust snaked inside, adding to the drift that had collected by the door.

Poison laughed softly behind his hand, a society laugh.

"He's not really with us," the woman said. "He's more like a stray. Shows up once in a while because we feed him. It looks like he did a pretty good job sewing you up, though. I didn't know he knew field surgery, did you, babe?"

This she directed at the older man who sat with her. He shrugged heavily, ponderously. "I don't know what he doesn't tell me, and he doesn't tell me much. He's got a one-track mind and a mouth that's only got two settings: preaching up hellfire, and pestering you for donations."

All at once he turned, thrusting a hand out in Frank's direction. "You can call me Dr. D. Which is short for Dr. Death. Which is short for Dr. Death Defying."

"Hey," Frank said.

"This is Crow Jane," he said, indicating the woman, and then he motioned to the final, silent watcher. The one with the covered face. "And Show Pony."

Hands shook all around. Crow Jane smiled at him, a tense harried look, like the smile of someone long-accustomed to cleaning up after other people. Show Pony offered only the tips of his fingers, and still he did not speak, but Frank felt him watching very closely from behind the visor or his motorcycle helmet.

Dr. Death had risen from his chair and gone around the bar, talking the whole while, as if he had a great store of words to expend or else they would pile up in his throat and choke him. He was saying that the desert was a bad mother, but mother all the same, to all the crazy orphans and unfortunate sons who had the bad luck to be born out of her sandy cunt, to come out screaming and purple, with the vultures already circling, before they'd even coughed the dust out of their lungs and drawn their first burning breath…

"You're mixing your metaphors again, babe," Crow Jane said with a shake of her head. "You get like this every time…"

"She means every time I drink," Dr. Death said. "Which is not as often as you might think, unless you count that rotgut moonshine they brew down by the coast, which you shouldn't."

With a flourish, he brought up a bottle from behind the bar. It was a little less than half-full. The paper label had long since worn off, and Frank, whose only experience with alcohol – besides the moonshine from the coast – was the bitter watered-down beer from the Better Living brewery, the vinegary wine from the Better Living vineyards, and the artificially colored ethanols from the Better Living distilleries, could only guess at what it contained.

Dr. Death lined up a row of shot glasses and poured. He was not conservative about it. Then he handed them around and said, "Salut."

Frank gulped his down. He glanced at Show Pony, thinking he might catch a glimpse of his face, but Show Pony held the empty shot glass delicately between two fingers, turning it to catch the light, the visor of his motorcycle helmet was securely lowered. Frank had the impression that he caught him looking, and that he smiled in the secrecy of his private darkness.

"By the way," Dr. Death said. "Poison here won't tell us your name. What do you want to be called?"

"I'm—" Frank started to say, but then he caught Poison watching him curiously. Poison, who had been Gerard for less than twenty-four hours. Who had shed his old name easily, like a weakness. Who was probably already thinking of himself as Party Poison, as if he had never been anything else, not even in a dream.

"I don't know yet," Frank said, and he was relieved when he saw Crow Jane nod in sympathy. "I'm still working on it."


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

They told him the bar had once been called The Killjoy, but Frank didn't know if he believed that. At any rate, there weren't any signs left. Even the big one out by the highway had been stripped by the wind down to the naked boards.

Dr. Death kept his radio rig in the back room. Every morning at four, he got up, heavy-footed on the concrete floor, rousing the rest of them so that they groaned and pulled the coats they had folded for pillows over their heads. He went out back and peeled back the sand-colored tarps from the antenna that lay on its side in the dust; he raised it alone and was back inside at five sharp, carrying the batteries that had spent the day previous baking in their solar-powered chargers.

He plugged them into the telegraph and switched it on, and while it chattered and spit tape, he warmed up a cup of coffee on the ancient hotplate behind the bar. He lit every lamp and candle in the goddamn place, like a ward against the darkness without.

Once the whole bar was ablaze, he sat down to read the dispatches as they came off the wire. The telegrams were always days behind, occasionally even weeks. Sometimes Frank would look at the pile of discarded tape and think that there must have been thousands of them out there, maybe millions, but during the time he spent at The Killjoy, he never met anyone else.

At six, when the batteries began to run low. Dr. Death started up the generator out back and powered up the transmitter and read the day's broadcast. If Frank had managed to sleep through the raising of the antenna, and the harsh glare of the lights, and the tapping of the telegraph, he'd have to get up then. They all got up, and moved like ghosts around the bar, eating canned rations and slipping out into the dusty parking lot to smoke.

By nine, the broadcast was over. Dr. Death powered off the generator and lowered the antenna. By ten he was drinking, and by noon he was drunk. Though he did manage to sober up a little in time to repeat the broadcast in the evening, by that time he usually needed Crow Jane to raise the antenna and switch out the batteries and refuel the generator for him.

They were left with the afternoons to take care of whatever small orders of business cropped up. On the first two days, they drove out to the car Poison had wrecked. The heat made Frank lightheaded and sick.

The car lay on its back in a ditch next to the road, baking in the sun. The passenger window was smashed and the frame was crumpled. They rolled it onto its side, pried open the hood and stripped out all the undamaged parts. Crow Jane said that when she sold them, she'd cut them in.

After they'd hauled out the engine, she pulled a Bowie knife out of her pack and slithered inside through the broken window so she could remove the upholstery from the seats. She'd pulled off her hoodie and left it hanging over the arm of one of a Joshua tree, and as she leaned out to pass Frank the first heavy sheet, he noticed the blue flowers that coiled up her forearm.

He wrestled the upholstery out the window. The vinyl was about a million degrees from sitting out in the sun, and it burned his palms so that red gummy blisters appeared in the creases of his knuckles. Frank wiped his hands on his jeans and nodded toward her tattoo. He said, "Where'd you get that?"

"I put it there."

"Yourself?"

"I was just practicing."

Crow Jane rubbed her hand over the roses self-consciously, and Frank heard himself say, "Want to practice on me next time?"

She squinted up at him. "It depends. What do you want?"

"It doesn't matter. But I want it here." He jabbed a finger into the side of his neck. "So that if I ever think I want to go back, I'll know that I can't."

* * *

That night, while Dr. Death clattered and cursed drunkenly by the light of a kerosene lantern back in the radio room, Crow Jane very carefully brought out the box that held her needles and the little vials of blue and black and green ink. She emptied the ink into a clean glass ashtray and held a fresh needle over the flame from a candle.

"Are you sure you won't tell me what you want?" she said, as she slid the needle into the gun.

"It doesn't matter," Frank replied. "Just make it something nice."

"You can't get pissed if you don't like it."

"I wouldn't get pissed. It's…" He struggled for the word.

"Symbolic?" Crow Jane said.

He looked down. "Something like that."

"You all do love your symbols don't you? Flags and crucifixes. And uniforms. Hold still."

She pressed the needle into the side of his neck. It didn't hurt, not the way he had expected it to, but he felt the humming of the tattoo gun all up and down the back of his throat. When he tried to speak his voice came out thin and without force.

"I don't know what—"

"You aren't going to stay here long, are you?" Crow Jane said abruptly, cutting him off.

"I don't know," Frank managed, surprised by the sudden change of subject. "Poison hasn't said anything about leaving."

"Do you do whatever he tells you?"

"It just seemed like he had something in mind."

Frank shifted in his seat, and Crow Jane grabbed him fiercely by the nape of the neck and held him still. "I guess it doesn't matter. But it's been nice, having someone around to talk to," she said.

She pressed the needle against his skin again, and he felt a deep ache moving through him, beading on his skin. He didn't like what she had said just then, didn't like the way she'd said it. He'd never had anyone want him around unless they were hoping to get something out of it.

He went rigid in Crow Jane's hold, but she didn't seem to notice. She rolled her shoulder back in a half-shrug that didn't interrupt the motion of the hand that held the gun.

"I know," she said quietly. "The Doctor doesn't always make a great first impression. He's better than you think, though."

"He's all right," Frank said. "I like him. I guess I like most people."

"It's because they tortured him," Crow Jane said. Her voice kept getting quieter and quieter, until he could barely hear it at all above the buzz of the needle knitting in and out of him. Frank could only see her a little out of the corner of his eye, but she never looked up from her work and her expression never changed.

"That was before the war. He wrote for the _New Worker_, and neither of us made any secret of our politics. Even when the Wall-Street Riots broke out on the East Coast, and then in Seattle, and then in Toronto, and then in Austin. And people were saying that when they'd said "Revolution" they'd meant it metaphorically. They'd meant an intellectual revolution. And they couldn't condone violence against the police, and against United States Troops. And he said they were traitors and equivocators, and that lost him a lot of friends who might have been able to bail him out before it was too late."

Frank was very still, listening. He didn't know why Crow Jane was saying this to him now, but he thought suddenly of Poison telling him that he had been easy to talk to when he was asleep. Frank felt wide awake now, but he wondered if, by some trick of remaining motionless and silent, he had made her think that he could not hear her.

"Then they pushed the hatespeech legislation through the House. They passed it as a rider on a bill allocating funds for a statue to commemorate a police officer who'd died in the Oakland riots. I remember it really well. He was the only non-civilian casualty, and he died when the shotgun he was firing into a crowd of protesters blew up in his hand. So they gave him a statue made out of marble and bronze. Very Classical and tasteful. It looked like a Civil War memorial. And there, at the very end of a 200 page bill about that fucking statue, were three sentences allowing anyone who expressed anti-Free Market or anti-Democracy views in print or in conversation to be held indefinitely, without trial, under the Patriot Act."

Frank shivered as a bead of ink burst on his skin and trickle down his neck. Crow Jane swiped at it with a tissue. The tattoo was starting to hurt him, but Frank felt that he was very clear-headed and sharp in spite of that, as if he were standing above himself, above the pain, and looking down.

And Crow Jane went on. "We knew it was only a matter of time then, and it was exciting. We wanted to be tested. Secretly, that was what we wanted. But in the end, it wasn't even personal enough to be a test. They drew up a secret list of suspected terrorists in the greater Battery City area, and his name was on it and mine wasn't. So they hauled him off to Alameda Street Jail, and didn't charge him with anything for the whole three years he spent there. And we weren't married because we had never even thought to be, so they wouldn't let me visit him. But I talked to some of the other men and women who came every day, and it seemed like even close family wasn't allowed in. That made me feel a little better. He got one letter out to me, and it said 'wait and see'. So I waited."

She paused again, looking at his neck as if inspecting the work, but she didn't seem to see him at all.

"Jane…" Frank started to say, but she just shook her head.

"Almost done now." She went back to work. "I waited three years, and then he came back. He said he escaped. He saw a chance and took it, because the guards got lax around the prisoners who'd been there a while. They figured they were too broken down to try anything. He said it took all he had to take the first step, and then after that it was easy. Show Pony was with him, and he already wore a mask to hide what they'd done to his face. Back then it was just a rag with two holes cut in it for the eyes. And he never spoke a word. And the Doctor said that he still loved the Revolution, and I could come with him if I wanted but – fair warning – he could never trust me because I hadn't been tortured. He said he'd never trust anyone ever again unless they'd been through what he had. But I loved the Revolution too."

All at once, she switched the tattoo gun off. She set it down gently and she folded the tissue over and cleaned off the ink. All her movements had become very careful and restrained.

"Remember, you said you wouldn't get pissed," she said. She brought the mirror out from behind the bar. The glass was warped and badly chipped, and the light was poor, but Frank could make out the bold black lines of a scorpion etched on the side of his neck. It wasn't anything special, but it looked perfect to him.

"Fuck yeah," Frank said, and grinned. "Badass."

Crow Jane taped a piece of plastic wrap over the tattoo, and they sat on the two remaining barstools and had a couple of beers. At that moment, he was pretty sure then he loved the Revolution too.

* * *

That night he slept on his right side to keep from laying on the tattoo, but when he woke up he had a pounding headache in the left side of his head. There were two words revolving in his mind. Each throb of blood that ran up his neck, past the scorpion, made them appear, like a neon sign flashing in the darkness.

_Fun Ghoul. Fun Ghoul. Fun Ghoul._

It took him a long time to realize that it was suppose to be a name.

He moved his tongue slowly inside his parched mouth, flicked it over his dry lips as if tasting them for the words he had not yet spoken. He could hear the telegraph chattering back in the radio room. Through the open door, a wedge of warm lamplight angled across the floor.

There was movement, the sound of the others rolling out of bed, groping for their clothes, groaning a little. On an impulse, he squeezed his eyes shut and pretended to be asleep. He lay still until they had gone, and then he stared up at the ceiling and enjoyed the feeling of being alone. The click of the telegraph became the buzz of white noise, and even the pain in his head came and went with a lulling steadiness.

He must have dozed again, because when he next awoke it was to the sound of Dr. Death beginning the broadcast day.

Saying, "In the incinerator room with the blackened walls in the basement of Blind Towers, in the reek of burned meat and disinfectant and lye, they're taking out the body bag that holds what's left of – enie menie minie moe – plenty of other body bags containing what they scraped up of John Doe. The insect fable is a certain promise, babies. The insect certain is the plague of fables…"

He flung back the blankets, pulled on his boots and shook out the vest he had used for a pillow. Out by the bar, Crow Jane was sitting on one of the stools, her back to the door of the radio room, her head thrown hard to one side, listening.

"Did he get started early? Or did he just never stop?"

Crow Jane smiled at him, thin lipped. "He's full of notions."

They kept their voices low so the microphone wouldn't pick them up. He started to tell her about the name that had come to him, seemingly in a dream, but then he stopped. "Poison…?"

She tilted her head slightly, indicating the door that led outside. He dropped his eyes, embarrassed, but then he went out onto the concrete porch. It was still dark, and the ground was bleached by a veil of frost. Poison was down at the far end of the porch, a dark shape against the dark sky. Only the cherried end of his cigarette cast a little light on his downturned face.

He touched his elbow, and stood up on his toes so he could murmur the name against Poison's ear. Poison turned and looked at him silently, as if affixing the image in his mind.

"What do you think?" Ghoul asked.

"I like it. I like most things about you."

A flush came over Ghoul's face. Poison didn't see it; he had already turned back to look out over the desert. Feeling suddenly reckless and impetuous, Ghoul seized his arm. "Like what?"

"Pardon?"

"What else do you like?"

Poison was quiet for a while. He moved with exquisite careless slowness, sliding an arm around Ghoul's waist. "I like that you saved me. I like that you're here with me now."

It wasn't what Ghoul wanted to hear, and he sighed. "Gerard…"

"Don't call me that."

"You've barely spoken to me since we got here."

Poison's hand moved, stroking him. He fit his palm around Ghoul's hip, and the outside ridge of his thumb slipped up under his clothes and found the little ribbon of sweat-slick skin above Ghoul's belt.

"You don't like it here, do you?" said Ghoul.

He moved closer, pressing his cheek against Poison's shoulder. The leather of his jacket felt cool against the side of his face. "I don't care what you decide you want to do," he said. "Just tell me first. Anything you want, I'll do it."

Poison didn't answer, but Ghoul knew he was listening. The cigarette still smoldered in the corner of his mouth, unsmoked and wasted.

"That's all I wanted to say to you," Ghoul said. "That, and the name. I'll see you."

He pulled away. Poison did not release him, but he let his arm slide from around Ghoul's waist. At the door, Ghoul glanced back briefly. Poison had not moved from the edge of the porch. The sun was coming up now, and in the blue light his skin looked pale to translucence. He neither burned nor tanned, no matter how long he spent in the harsh desert sun, and when Ghoul realized that he felt a cold splinter of dread lodge itself in his heart.

But you always knew, he told himself. You always knew just what he was.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

That night, after they had bunked down, Ghoul lay awake in his blankets and tried to make himself feel sleepy. He could hear coyotes giggling far out in the desert, and feel the great still weight of the wasteland pressing in on him. The city had never been so unbearably quiet, not even in the days of martial law when there had been a curfew in place. There had always been the comforting sounds of distant sirens or scattered gunfire. He had not known what loneliness was until he came here.

A shadow crossed in the darkness over his bed, and Ghoul moved on instinct, slipping his hand under the pillow where his pistol was hidden. A cool touch on the back of his wrist stopped him before he could draw.

"It's only me," Poison said softly.

Ghoul relaxed his grip. Poison lifted the edge of the blanket and got into bed beside him. The cot did not make any noise at all when it sank beneath his weight.

"What do you want?" Ghoul whispered. He moved over to give Poison enough room. The bed was small and they had to lay very close. He could see the pale curve of Poison's cheek, bluish and waxen in the darkness.

"I knew you weren't asleep," Poison said. "I could hear you breathing."

He slipped a knee up between Ghoul's legs; his thigh brushed briefly against his crotch, so fleeting that it could have been an accident. But Ghoul knew better than that. Poison did not make careless mistakes; there were no accidents where he was involved.

Ghoul felt his pulse thudding in his throat. He knew that Poison was watching him curiously, waiting for him to speak, but Ghoul couldn't think of a single thing to say. In desperation, he leaned over and tested a dry kiss against Poison's lips. Poison shifted against him, passing the tips of his fingers down Ghoul's side with deliberate slowness, feeling each individual rib.

"I didn't think you still wanted…" Ghoul didn't finish. His voice, though little more than a harsh whisper, had seemed loud to his own ears.

"Oh?" Poison's hand was at the level of his waist now. He slipped it beneath the hem of Ghoul's shirt, moving slow, so slow, but with glacial irresistibility.

"After that first time…" Ghoul gasped.

"You were afraid I had seduced you to my own ends," Poison said quietly. He caressed Ghoul's stomach; his fingers were very cold and delicate, and they felt good in the stifling heat. "To make you help me escape."

"Maybe," Ghoul said. He laughed weakly. It all seemed ridiculous now. "This feels like a dream. I wish it didn't. I want it to be real."

Poison's hand was at the crotch of his jeans, tugging at the zipper. Ghoul touched his wrist. "Wait. What if they hear us?"

"Why do you care what they think?" Poison said.

"I don't. I just…"

"They won't suspect a thing, as long as you're quiet."

There didn't seem to be any sense in arguing, not when Poison had his mind made up. Ghoul let his hand fall from Poison's wrist, and he lay back, still and tense. The pillow was hot and damp against his turned cheek. He wished he could flip it over to the cold side.

How trancelike, how unreal, the way Poison unhooked the button on Ghoul's jeans, spread the two wings of denim back and eased his cock out. His hand was cool on the shaft, stroking him. Not making a fist, but caressing him first with the hollow of his palm and then with the back.

Ghoul sucked in a sharp breath. It must have been louder than he thought, because Poison's free hand descended over his mouth. He turned him with silent tenderness, and pushed his face into the pillow. Ghoul jerked back against him, just once, his fingers curling restlessly in the sheets. His first impulse was to struggle, but he kept still. Poison's hand was on the nape of his neck, his fingers threaded up through his hair. He was very gentle. In fact, he was not hurting him at all, but in his touch there was no allotment for mercy or compromise.

Poison shifted, straddling him. His hips were up against Ghoul's thigh, and Ghoul could feel the hard ridge of his cock through his jeans. Ghoul's breath was coming faster now and his chest ached. A foul bitter taste flooded the back of his throat, like a premonition of panic, but he felt no panic, no fear at all. It was as if he had been purged of everything – all thought and emotion – save for the immediacy of Poison's hands.

Poison's weight half-resting on his back, Poison's hips grinding against his ass, Poison's hand moving in slow half-circles around the shaft of his cock... Ghoul trembled, ungainly ,beneath him, jerking his tensed hips mindlessly, his voice coming in senseless whimpers, smothered against the pillow.

He came, shuddering, and all the strength seemed to rush out of him. He didn't try to move, even after Poison had lifted the hand from the back of his neck. His face felt flushed and his throat ached. There was a dry heat building behind his eyes, but he did not recognize it for what it was until he had already begun to cry.

"Shit…" he gasped. He realized he couldn't breathe, and at last he lifted his face out of the pillow. "I don't know what… I've never…"

Embarrassed, he passed a trembling hand over his face. Poison touched his jaw, turning him for a kiss. Ghoul sobbed once, questioningly, against his mouth, and then he was quiet. He let Poison part his lips, slicking his tongue over the inside of his mouth. Without the hard, desperate edge to his kisses, he almost seemed like a different man. Shakily, Ghoul touched his face in the darkness, reassuring himself that it was the same smooth cheek, the same ragged unwashed fringe of hair.

Poison's hands moved quickly over the front of Ghoul's jeans, tucking him back in and buttoning him up.

"There," Poison whispered. He slipped out from under the blankets. "Good night."

"Goodnight," Ghoul said, but he didn't know if Poison was still there to hear.

* * *

The next morning, the telegraph woke him. Ghoul felt jittery and wilted, awkward in his own skin, as if he had spent the night in the grip of unsettling dreams. He got up in the bright chill of dawn and ran a hand through his hair to smooth it out. His tattoo itched maddeningly. Ghoul went behind the bar, where a wedge of cloudy mirrored glass still hung in the frame, and peeled back his collar so he could see it.

The scorpion stood out blackly against his livid skin. Ghoul ran his thumb over the tattoo and flakes of dried ink came off on his hand. He heard a whisper of movement behind him, and he turned to see Poison come out from the back room, barefoot and in his shirt sleeves. Without the bulk of his leather jacket and boots around him, he seemed deceptively small, as if there were not enough of him to fill the space he occupied in the air.

Ghoul did not look away quickly enough. Poison caught his eye and started over towards him. Ghoul turned back to the mirror, staring resolutely at his reflection as if he could sink into it and be lost. He heard Poison come up behind him; he looked distorted in the murky glass. At a loss for anything else to say, Ghoul tilted his head to show the tattoo.

"What do you think?" he asked.

"It's fine," Poison said. "If you like hepatitis."

He cupped the outsides of Ghoul's arms in his hands, and Ghoul felt a shudder run through him. "Last night…"

"Yes?"

Ghoul laughed hoarsely. "I don't know. I wish I understood you…"

"So do I." Poison leaned close, as if to kiss him, and Ghoul tilted his face back in anticipation of it. A soft sound, the decorous clearing of a throat, interrupted them.

Dr. Death stood in the doorway of the radio room watching them. Ghoul flinched away, but Poison did not surrender his hold on him. It did not seem to occur to him that he ought to be embarrassed or annoyed at the interruption.

"I thought this looked a little personal for the regular broadcast," Dr. Death said, thrusting a length of telegraph ribbon into Ghoul's hand. "I have to say something so he knows I got it – I have my journalistic integrity – but I figured I'd let you take a look first."

Ghoul smoothed out the crumpled paper in his palm. He'd never had much of a chance to learn to read when he was younger, but the note was short and the meaning plain. It didn't give him much trouble to make out.

COME HOME. ALL IS FORGIVEN.

And then, after the stop, was the name. He didn't even have to struggle to read it; in fact he could have guessed it even if it hadn't been there at all.

THE MANSKINNER.

Ghoul balled up the telegram and stuffed it in his pocket. He could feel Dr. Death watching him, calculating, taking the measure of him as if laying eyes on him for the first time.

"What?" Ghoul hissed.

"Nothing," Dr. Death said with a shrug. "I didn't know you knew Alexei, that's all."

* * *

They left The Killjoy before dawn with nothing but the clothes on their backs and their pistols.

Crow Jane fussed over them a little, and insisted on driving them out to the edge of the quarantined suburbs. It was pretty picked over these days, she told them, but they ought to be able to scavenge a car and some necessities.

The suburbs were ringed with a high adobe wall crowned with coils of barbed wire. Crow Jane circled around the perimeter until she found a gap where the bricks had crumbled inward. She got out with them, and stood hugging herself against the chill of the morning.

"It looks like a prison," Ghoul said. Through the gap in the wall, he could see nothing save dusty abandoned streets and the flaking facades of dozens of identical houses.

"It's kind of spooky when you first get inside," Crow Jane said. "But it's not that bad."

"Let's go," Poison said, pulling on his gloves and picking his way through the broken bricks.

Ghoul started to follow him, but Crow Jane caught his arm and pulled him back. She pressed a wad of bills into his hand. "Take this. You'll probably need it."

"I don't—" Ghoul started to say, but she shook her head sharply.

"Just take it. And be careful out there. You'll meet all kinds of people."

"Thanks," Ghoul said, but Crow Jane had already gotten back in the car. Ghoul shoved the money into the pocket of his vest and went to join Poison, who was watching him incuriously from just inside the wall.

"Are you ready?" Poison said.

"Yeah."

"Don't be afraid."

Ghoul jerked his head up, but Poison's expression was flat and unreadable. "I'm not… afraid," Ghoul said. "At least not of this. The only thing that scares me is slowing down. Not getting far enough away."

"Yes," Poison said. "That's what I meant."


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N**: This chapter is brought to you by a 12 hour layover in the Seoul airport. Please R&R!

* * *

Chapter 6

Inside the walls of the suburb, every surface was dry, faded, brittle, and honeycombed with rot. The rows of indistinguishable houses had been stripped of paint down to the gray cinderblocks. Their identical front yards had all become uniformly choked with weeds.

A gauzy colorless layer of sand covered the pavement, crunching beneath their boots with every step, the only sound that could be heard on the deserted street. It was starting to wear on Ghoul's nerves.

"How long has it been like this?" Ghoul said.

"Under quarantine, you mean?" Poison replied quietly. "Three years. Or four. Not long."

"Where is everyone?"

"I don't know."

"Are they all dead?"

"I don't know."

"Christ…" Ghoul whispered to no one in particular. He certainly wasn't talking to Poison, because Poison didn't give a shit. "It smells like death."

"Do you think so?"

"Old death. Like bones and dust. But then, what doesn't these days?"

"I don't know," Poison said.

Ghoul glared at Poison's back. "What's gotten into you? All this morning, you couldn't keep your hands off me. Now you're acting like you can't wait to get rid of me."

"I'm thinking," Poison said mildly.

"You're so fucking _moody_ all the time," Ghoul said, pushing him now, just for the hell of it. "Am I supposed to guess when you want me around, and then just stay out of your way the rest of the time?"

"Be quiet," Poison said. He did not raise his voice at all, but Ghoul could tell that something final had entered into the words, something that could not be ignored or contradicted. Ghoul shivered, as if suddenly cold, and he shut his mouth.

The streets of the suburb looped and meandered and terminated in dead-ends. It was a fucking labyrinth, a fucking architectural nightmare. Ghoul let Poison lead the way; he seemed to have some idea of where he was going. He brought them to a low concrete wall that marked the boundary of the residential block. Below them, at the foot of a steep gravel slope, was the hub where the freeway exit had once disgorged into town.

There were some gas stations down there, gutted fast food places, a couple of massive supermarkets. Without a word, Poison grabbed the top of the concrete wall and boosted himself over. It was at that moment that the weight in Ghoul's chest shook loose.

He darted forward, catching Poison's sleeve before he could lower himself onto the other side of the wall. Poison glanced at him, and for a moment it even seemed that he was startled.

"I'm not… I'm not going to do that," Ghoul managed to say. "Because I know it's not really what you want."

Abruptly, he blushed. The final moments of their last conversation had been replaying themselves in Ghoul's head endlessly while they had walked in silence. They had still seemed fresh to him. But Poison hadn't been thinking of that, not him. He probably didn't even remember...

The lines of Poison's face softened. It could hardly be called a smile, but it was a definite and subtle shift. He touched Ghoul's cheek briefly with the back of his gloved hand, and then he slipped over the wall and dropped out of sight.

Embarrassed, trembling as if he had just been in a fight, Ghoul hauled himself over the wall and followed him.

Even now, Ghoul did not know how he had ended up here. How this had happened, or why it had chosen him to happen to. From the first meeting – almost from the first moment – Ghoul had felt that some unspoken need had suddenly been fulfilled, that some secret hollow place inside him had all at once become whole.

But he had not wanted anything before Poison had come along. If they had never met then he would have continued to not want, perpetually and indefinitely. Of that, Ghoul was certain. He did not wish that it had never happened, but he could not bring himself to be grateful that it had. It was simply something he had to deal with, something he had to come through in one piece. Things were no different than they had always been.

At the bottom of the gravel slope, Ghoul stumbled. Poison caught his arm, steadying him. It felt good, the sudden shock of his strength, but Ghoul looked down and was resolutely silent.

They were on a wide road between two massive supermarkets of opposing identical chains. In both parking lots, few decaying cars stood like crooked teeth. The windows that banded the fronts of the supermarkets had all been broken; the automatic doors had been pried open and wedged back with lengths of rebar. The door on the right stood open, but the one on the left had been awkwardly covered with a flat piece of plywood. A string of numbers had been written along the top of it. They were not fresh, but they were relatively new.

"That one," Poison said, and started toward the boarded-up supermarket. Without glancing back, he added, "Keep your head up. I'll do what I can to protect you, but I want you to stay alert."

"Protect me?" Ghoul echoed weakly. "What are you…?"

But Poison had already gone on ahead, and Ghoul had to hurry to catch up.

At the door of the supermarket, Poison halted abruptly. Up close, Ghoul could see that the plywood had only been nailed down on one side, allowing it to be swung back enough to slip through.

"Well?" Ghoul said. "Are you going in?"

"I don't know," Poison replied quietly.

Ghoul shot him a look of disbelief which Poison, typically, did not seem to notice at all. He still felt a gnawing resentment towards Poison for suggesting that he needed to be protected, and so Ghoul stepped forward and grabbed the edge of the plywood and jerked it back.

He heard a faint click, a sound which he could not place immediately but which made his stomach turn over with unease. A hand closed around the back of his collar, and at some point between the moment it jerked him roughly back and the moment he landed on his ass, his head filled with the sound of an explosion and the white afterimage of a magnesium flash.

Ghoul saw in an instant what had happened. One corner of the plywood door had disintegrated into slivers, and from behind it jutted the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun with a finger of blue smoke still trailing from it. A thread was stretched between the edge of the door and the frame, and no doubt it was threaded around the trigger of the gun, tying it back so that it would only take a little pull – the momentum of the plywood door as it was swung back – to fire both barrels.

It was a crude trap, but he had almost stepped right into it. Sobered, Ghoul started to struggle to his feet. A hand clamped down on his shoulder, forcing him back down.

"Don't move." Poison's voice was up against his ear. Ghoul fell still, obeying so easily, so immediately, that it was almost as if he had forgotten he had any other choice.

"Just put your hands up," Poison continued. "Very slowly."

Bewildered, Ghoul did as he had said. He felt the weight of Poison's hand lift from his shoulder, and only then did he feel he could move under his own power. He looked around, and the first thing he saw was the red brand of a laser sight on Poison's temple.

Poison's expression was tense, but more annoyed than concerned. There was open contempt in the way he raised his hands in a gesture of surrender.

Ghoul turned the opposite way, craning his neck around, following the sight back to its source. It came from the far edge of the parking lot where, in the shade of a dead tree, a Chevy Impala sat rusting into nonexistence.

The driver's side door – the one nearest them – swung slowly open. The bead on Poison's face jittered, leaving scratchy contrails on his skin.

"Un-fucking-believable…" Ghoul muttered.

"Relax," he heard Poison say softly, in a single exhalation.

The man who climbed out of the car was tall and corded with lean muscles, but there seemed to be something hard-won about the shape of him, the loose fit of the flesh around his jowls, as if he had once let his body sag into fat complacency and then had needed to get back to his fighting weight in a hurry. As he came closer, Ghoul saw that there were lines around his eyes, and the architecture of his face was sinking rapidly with impending middle age.

Though the ambush he had laid for them had been clumsy and amateurish, he could clearly handle the gun that he kept trained on them. It was a pre-war Glock, the kind that fired real bullets. Practically an antique in this day and age, but the stranger seemed to know his way around it well enough to give them trouble if he put his mind to it.

He came across the parking lot to them, but even when he was close enough to speak he made no attempt to. Ghoul was coming to suspect that, now that he had caught them, he had no idea what he was supposed to do.

At last, Poison broke the silence. "We're just passing through."

When he spoke, the stranger adjusted his aim subtly, taking aim between Poison's eyes. "What do you want?"

"I want you to get that fucking thing out of my face."

An expression of abrupt and wounded surprise flashed across the stranger's face. With a strange jerky motion, his finger convulsed on the trigger of the Glock, though not enough to pull it.

"You…" he started to say. Ghoul cut him off.

"Listen, motherfucker. If you're going to shoot him then hurry up and do it so I can fucking wreck your shit. Or, you can shoot me first, and have him make you sorrier than I ever could."

The stranger's eyes darted between them, sizing them up. At last, he lowered the Glock slowly.

"Did you come from _out there_?" he asked.

"From the desert," Poison said. "We're looking for a car. Perhaps further supplies, if it can be negotiated."

"Negotiated…" The stranger seemed suddenly nervous, and he passed the back of his hand over his mouth. "There's no one to negotiate with. Just me. I'm the only one who's left. You might have gotten in here and gotten out without me ever even noticing you. It was only pure chance that I saw you. I was up on the roof. I—"

He broke off abruptly. A helpless look had come into his eyes, as if he wished that he could stop talking but was powerless to.

"You did just what I always figured you would. Came down here, tried to go inside. I hid where I always planned to hide. I'm not stupid, though; I know it was pure luck. You could have gone across the street. You could have broken into one of the houses and gotten what you needed from there. But you're here, and you're talking to me. So that means something."

The stranger paused; then, almost as an afterthought, he added. "I have a car."

"There don't seem to be any shortage of those around here," Poison said in a tone that was, faintly but unmistakably, mocking.

"I'll give it to you," the stranger said. "You can have it. But on one condition."

Poison narrowed his eyes. It seemed that he already knew what the stranger would ask him, and even Ghoul had his suspicions. He hoped that they were wrong.

"Let me see the car first," Poison said at last.

"All right," the stranger said. "You'll like it. It's a good car. I took good care of it." He started to turn away, and then stopped short. He came back to face them with a curious jerking movement. "I don't even know what I should call you."

"Poison. And Ghoul."

"I'm Ray." He seemed to relax a little. "Ray is fine. I don't really get the name thing…"

"That's because you're fucking _old_," Ghoul said, and then all at once, he was laughing. Even Poison lifted a hand delicately to his lips and breathed one of those rare, contemptuous, high-society laughs of his. A hurt look moved briefly across Ray's face. Ghoul noticed it, and realized that he did not care about it in the slightest, which struck him as funnier still.

* * *

Ray took them back to one of the track houses. The ground floor windows were boarded up, and there was a heavy padlock on the garage. Other than that, there was no way to tell that this house alone was still inhabited, was any different from the others on the street.

The Trans Am, low and curved and scarab-shaped, was parked in the garage. Poison gave the car's exterior a brief appraisal, then he went around to the open window on the driver's side and popped the hood. Ghoul, who was mystified by car stuff, kicked one of the tires a few times and then stepped back out of the way.

"I trashed the plates a long time ago," Ray said. "And I scraped the VIN number off."

"Why did you do that?" Poison said without looking up from the Trans Am's guts.

"It… it seemed like a good idea. Don't you think?"

"It seems a rather futile gesture." Poison straightened up, and slammed the hood shut. "This vehicle will need a lot of fuel. And a lot of maintenance."

"But it's built like a tank," Ray said. "And out on the highway, it'll fly. I got it up to 130 once, just on the main drag through the middle of town."

Poison gave him a flat, skeptical look. He seemed on the point of refusing, which would have suited Ghoul just fine, but Ray just kept fucking talking.

"I've got more stuff," he said. "Supplies. Come out back and let me show you."

Poison glanced back at him, but it took Ghoul a long time to realize he was asking his opinion. Ghoul just shrugged, and they followed Ray through a chain link gate and around the rear of the house.

The back yard was a narrow strip of colorless dirt. There was a dead tree in one corner and a tin shed in the other. In between were several shapeless lumps of plastic, some of which looked like they had once been patio furniture and others like they had once been children's toys. Underneath the skeletal branches of the tree, three crosses jutted out of the ground. They had been made in a hurry, out of unfinished planks of scrap wood lashed together with string. The graves they marked had sunken into the ground, and Ray did not spare them a look as he went past.

He opened the shed, and Ghoul could feel the heat radiating from within. Along the walls were stacked palates of canned food, drums of gasoline, five-gallon jugs of water.

"You can have anything you want," Ray said. "But the deal is still the same. You'll take me with you. I'm not going to pretend I know what's going on out there, or that I'll be much help to you, or even that you'll like me, but that's what I want."

"Pardon me a moment," Poison said coolly, and then Ghoul saw that he was coming towards him. He took Ghoul's arm and drew him back under the tree, which gave no shade. They were standing right over the first of the three graves, but the day was too damn hot for Ghoul to feel a chill.

"Well?" Poison asked him. "What do you think?"

"Honestly?"

"Yes, of course."

"Honestly," Ghoul said. "Honestly, I don't trust anyone but you. I don't want anyone else around. I think if it could just be you and me against all the rest of them, then that's what would make me happier than anything."

"I see," Poison replied. He started to turn away, but Ghoul caught his sleeve.

"But," he said. "I think that guy has more in him than it seems. He said he's the only one alive here, and that must mean he's doing something right. Maybe he's smart, or resourceful, or lucky, or something. It doesn't matter. I think he'll be useful."

Poison looked at him in silence for a moment, and then he said, "Thank you for your candor."

He went back to where Ray stood. He had watched them the whole time with deep suspicion and almost no hope at all.

"Give me the car keys," Poison said.

"What…?"

"Give me the keys." Poison held out his hand. "I am accepting your offer, but I'm going to drive."

* * *

They packed what they could fit in the trunk of the Trans Am. Water was the most important; it went in first. Then gas, then food. They filled the gaps with blankets, rolls of toilet paper, insect repellant, duct tape, batteries, and bullets. When that was done and, with some coaxing, the trunk had been closed and latched, Poison motioned for Ray to get in the back seat.

"In a second," he said. "I have one more thing I have to do. You'd better take the car out on the street, though."

He handed over the keys, and it did not seem to cause him any pain or regret to do so. Ghoul slid into the passenger seat, and when Poison started the engine he felt a smooth powerful vibration pass through the chassis of the car.

"Guess he took care of it pretty well," Ghoul said, patting the dashboard. "It's not practical, but I kind of like it."

Poison eased the Trans Am down the driveway and into the street. A moment later, Ray came out of the garage, carrying two of the drums of gasoline that they hadn't been able to find room for in the trunk. He went around to the front of the house, unscrewed the caps, and splashed the gasoline over the door, up the walls, into the dry overgrown brush that choked the yard. Then he took a scrap of paper out of his pocket, twisted it into a long fuse, set fire to one end and tossed it into the pool at his feet.

The front of the house erupted in flames.

Ray watched for a moment to make sure the fire was spreading, then he came down the driveway without looking back. Ghoul let him into the back seat. He felt that he ought to say something, if only to acknowledge what had just happened, but nothing came to mind.

"All right," Ray said. "Let's go."

* * *

They stopped once on the way out of town so Poison could get cigarettes. Ray pursed his lips disapprovingly.

"Those things kill you, you know."

Poison shoved the cartons of cigarettes under the seat of the Trans Am. "I am well aware of the risks."

"Then I don't get why anyone would choose to—"

Poison whipped around to face him. "Because for twenty-two years I wasn't allowed to smoke. And now I want to, so I will."

His voice had sounded strange just then, so strange that Ghoul, who had been watching the fire spread through the block of house above them, turned around to look at him.

"Poison," he said quietly. "Just get in. Let's just go."

A minute, almost imperceptible shudder passed through Poison's body. He tossed the last two cartons of cigarettes on the dash and slid in behind the wheel. Ray, who was in equal parts confused and shaken, got in the back seat.

No one spoke as they left the burning suburb behind. The silence was smothering. Ghoul reached over and flipped on the radio. Most of the dial was static, but down near one end he picked up Dr. Death's voice. Ghoul felt a sudden bitter pang of homesickness, as if he had been away for months rather than a few hours.

"Confidential to a certain Killjoy out there," Dr. Death was saying. "A certain friend of the family."

Ghoul felt his heart sink, felt his chest constricting, tighter and tighter, until he did not even have the strength to lean forward and switch the radio off again.

"Your comrade and mine has a special message for you. The big Red boss in Battery City says it's about time for you to cry, cry, cry, cry, cry all the way back home."


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

At first, they holed up in an old ranch house back in the hills. The windows were all broken and one corner of the roof had caved in. The door had long since fallen off its hinges and into the dust. But all of that mattered very little. It never rained in the wasteland.

A clean cow skull hung above the entryway, and a lot of filthy ones littered the desert for a couple of miles in all directions. They made Ghoul nervous; he'd never really had much experience with animals, dead or live ones. Once he got past that, however, the place was nice enough. They had drinking water to spare and plenty of food, so they all went to bed early and slept late into the day. Ghoul couldn't seem to get enough sleep, as if this were his first real chance at peace. As if he had years of lost rest to make up.

Some nights, in the full-dark before the moon rose, Poison would feel his way over to where Ghoul lay curled up in his blankets. Then, Ghoul didn't mind being awake. They'd fool around in a clumsy half-dreamlike way, never getting much beyond handjobs and dry humping and lazy drawn-out kisses. Ghoul still came about as hard as he ever had in his life.

There didn't seem to be any sense or reason to Poison's visits. Sometimes he would come three nights in a row; sometimes three nights would go by with nothing. Ghoul wondered if Poison was testing him somehow, or opening an invitation to him, but he never quite managed to get himself together enough to cross the empty stretch of floor to where Poison lay, unmoving in sleep or patient anticipation.

Besides, Poison always came back to him. In time, Ghoul would always feel the weight of his cool darkness bending over him; his voice, with its dry urgency, whispering, "Shh, it's me. It's only me." long after Ghoul had figured out that much. There would be the blazing cipher of his kiss, branding itself once more on Ghoul's neck.

There were times, Ghoul knew, that they weren't quiet. Ray must have heard them, but he never said a word, nor even gave Ghoul one of those shrewd barracks looks that would have indicated he knew everything. Ghoul was grateful for that, though sometimes he thought it must have been pretty hard on Ray, with his wife dead and all. Alone for all those long months…

Ghoul never followed that thought to its logical conclusion. Ray was too paternal, too lamely fatherly, for Ghoul to think about him that way. It was like that time back when he was still in the PUF, when that stacked blonde Belorussian arms dealer had shown up trying to unload two tons of C4. The Manskinner had gotten all squirrelly and conducted a lot of private conferences in his room with Irina. It was enough to make your balls crawl up inside your abdomen and die.

At the ranch house, they didn't have much to fill their days. Poison started to refer to the time they spent there as Operation Thoreau. He seemed to regard it as a kind of limbo, a kind of stasis into which they had all willingly entered.

Ray tried his hand at hunting, and he proved to be a pretty good shot. He brought down a massive milk-white three-headed snake, a mangy coyote with a row of boney spines protruding from its back, and finally something that would have been a fish were it not for the fact that it had a lizard's legs and crawled on the sand.

No one felt much like trying the meat from any of them, and that was the end of their experiment in self-sufficiency.

Slowly, mistrustfully, almost unwillingly, they began to talk to pass the time. They talked about the present sometimes, the past often. Never the future. Ray told them that he had been hired at an investment firm in Battery City right out of college, that he'd married at the respectable age of 31, that they'd had a son and daughter and that it had been his idea to move out of the city. His idea, but for the kids' sake. Then, he told them how things had been when he was alone; the traps he had laid in the desperate hope that someone would come along to trip them, the supplies he had set aside like a distress beacon to the outside world.

All for profit, Ray had said. He'd had a lot of time to think it over, and he knew now why they had cut the suburb off. The gas rationing and the food shortages had hit Battery City hard, and to keep the outlying areas of the Zones supplied cost more than it paid in. Best, then, to excise the cancer draining the life from the city. It was in the best interests of the shareholders.

And it was wrong, Ray went on. But maybe it was wrong of us, too. To set ourselves apart from people, to act like we did not need their labor more than they needed ours. I don't know. I don't know how to put it into words exactly. I don't know…

It was then that Poison had gotten up and stormed out. Neither of them had made a move to follow him.

As he listened to him talk, Ghoul knew that Ray was holding some things back. He never said what had happened after the quarantine of the suburb; he never let on what had become of everyone else. In his calm and articulate account, there was no sign of the man who had taken a lighter and a can of gasoline and reduced that part of his life to ashes.

Ghoul didn't mind, though. He was holding back quite a bit himself.

Only Poison didn't say much. He sat with them, and he listened and he chain smoked. It seemed that sometimes Ghoul could detect a kind of sadness in his expression, a kind of obscure yearning, as if Poison had no stories to tell except those that must be self-censored and silenced.

Still, they had their nights together, and Ghoul was afraid when he thought of how long and how well those might sustain him.

As the days stretched into weeks, Ghoul noticed that Poison's mind began to wander. That he stared at the horizon and sometimes walked out to the Trans Am just to rest his hands upon its baking hood.

One afternoon, Ghoul came out of the house and found Poison standing like that, his fists clenched against the car, his eyes fixed on some point in the far distance. And he remembered what Poison had told him once – back when he was still Gerard – that he would take them away. As far away as he could.

Ghoul knew that they weren't there yet.

He came up behind Poison and put an arm around his waist and pressed his lips to his shoulder.

"Want to head out tomorrow?" he said.

"Yes," Poison replied distantly. "Tomorrow is good."

"I'll let Ray know."

"Thank you."

In the morning, they awoke early and packed the car and headed for the highway.

* * *

For several days they travelled the desert without seeing anyone, though they came across frequent signs of habitation. In every abandoned gas station, diner, or roadhouse where they stopped to spend the night there were fresh cigarette butts, empty cans with the pasty residue of food inside them still damp. Once, they even found a set of tire tracks, new and crisp-looking in the dust.

Ray had grown taciturn and sullen. Poison maintained his elegant silences. Caught between the two encroaching walls of quiet, Ghoul felt himself stifled and choked. By the third evening, he was glad to get out of the car for the night, even if it meant leaving the comfort of the AC behind.

Poison had settled on a doublewide trailer set back from the highway. It had once been a restaurant, but little remained except for the stainless steel shelves in the kitchen and a huge scarred billiards table, too sturdy to break down for firewood, that dominated the dining room.

Night came on quickly. Ray lit a kerosene lantern and they crowded superstitiously into the halo of light it cast. Ghoul sifted listlessly through the cans of food he had brought in, not bothering to try to read the labels. He wished he could think of something to say to break the silence, but nothing came to mind. He snatched up one of the cans at random, tore the lid off and vindictively began to shovel miniature ravioli and congealed tomato sauce into his mouth. It tasted good, but it had no substance. It seemed to disappear as soon as it was inside him.

Something moved outside the trailer, scratching along the tin wall.

Ghoul's eyes came up, and he knew he was not the only one who had heard it. Ray had the Glock out of its holster, and he held it at twitching readiness. Poison was already on his feet, making a cutting motion with one hand for them to keep still.

He moved across the floor so stealthily that he seemed not to be taking steps at all. It was as if he floated above the ground. The scratching came agin just as he reached the door, and Poison's pistol was at the ready when he flung open the screen.

There was a beat of silence, and then Poison let the gun drop back to his side. "I could have killed you," he said.

"I'm glad that you did not," came a voice that Ghoul recognized. "I don't make it a habit to go armed."

Poison came back inside. A small shadow trailed meekly behind him, its hat in its hands.

"It's that preacher," Poison said.

"Prophet," Prester John corrected, but wryly, as if it were part of a joke he and Poison shared.

"I remember," Ghoul said. "Come on in. Have something to eat. I owe you. This is Ray, so you know."

Prester John came into the light. He sat down carefully, straight-backed, and placed his hat on his knees.

"What are you doing here?" Poison asked.

"The light in your window looked welcoming to this weary clay. I pray that I have not intruded."

"No," Ghoul said, and Poison gave him a sudden curious look. He set his jaw against it. "We've got some drinking water and a place for you to sleep. That's about it, though."

"Also, if I recall, it is long past time for those stitches of yours to come out."

Ghoul rubbed the ridge of scar tissue at his temple. "To tell you the truth, I completely forgot."

"I shall remove them," Prester John said. "As it was I who put them there."

"Does that mean you were looking for us?" Poison asked.

"Far from it. It was but Providence that brought me to you this night, as it does in time guide me to all the far-flung goats of His flock."

"You're nothing but a small-time con artist," Poison said haughtily. "You act humble. Ingratiate yourself to everyone. All for what? A free meal?"

"Poison…" Ray said.

"No, let him speak," Prester John said with a faint smile. "I should aspire to be nothing greater in his eyes. Though you don't seem to like me much, Brother. I hope that I can one day give you cause to reevaluate your opinion."

He stood up, a swift decisive motion, and picked up the lantern. "I think the light will be better over here. Come."

Lowering his eyes, Ghoul followed him to a spot near the kitchen, where a low-hanging partition did make the light fall differently over their faces. While Prester John took out a little penknife and fastidiously cleaned and sterilized it, Ghoul found himself painfully aware of Poison's voice, a hot indistinct whisper coming from somewhere back in the darkness.

"Anyway," Ghoul managed, just to have something to say. "Anyway, it's good to see a familiar face."

"Yes."

"I guess you know all the people who live out here pretty well, don't you? How many of us are there?"

"Fewer than there once were. It is slow work replacing those who have gone ahead to wait. But that isn't what you really want to know, is it?"

"I just—Ow!" Ghoul flinched. Prester John had moved in quick while he was busy looking towards Poison and had severed the three small sutures on his temple.

"Please, go on," Prester John said as he began to remove the threads.

"It's just that we haven't met anyone since we left The Killjoy. No one but you. And I think Poison is starting to get impatient."

"Impatient for what?"

"I don't know," Ghoul said. "For something to happen, I guess. He probably gets bored easily, knowing him."

"Could it be that they are all avoiding you," Prester John said with a shrug.

"Do they do that a lot? Avoid people?"

Prester John laughed, a sudden and unexpected sound. "If they avoid me, I don't know about it. But I'll put in a kind word for you amongst the good people."

"Thanks," Ghoul sighed. The stitches were out, but all at once he found that he did not want to go back right away. Prester John was watching him with a gentle interrogative expression, as if he understood all without being told.

"Listen," Ghoul said. "Do you really believe in all that stuff you talk about? Prophecy. I mean, that's like psychic powers right?"

"It's not quite like that. The knowledge comes from within, not without. I have not, to my knowing, seen the face of our Lord yet to come. But, yes. I do believe." He gave Ghoul a knowing look. "Not everyone does."

Ghoul hesitated. "I don't want to start shit with you. You seem like a good person, and I don't want to make you upset, or whatever."

"It is difficult to upset me with words alone," Prester John said. "One of my functions is the Confession, after all."

"So you're, like, Catholic?"

"I am whatever is required of me." He folded his hands on the counter, interlacing his long fingers. He had the broken nails and bulging knuckles of a laborer. "Tell me what's on your mind."

"Nothing, really," Ghoul said. "I guess I was just thinking about you. About what it must be like to be you. I've never believed in anything. Even when I was a kid, I knew there wasn't a god. Nothing like that could possibly exist. I still know it, even now."

"Sometimes I think," Prester John replied, "that God, such as He is, must exist only in relation to the individual. Absent from the hearts of they who proclaim him most ardently, but ever beside his most adamant deniers."

"That's a nice way of putting it. But it doesn't really make it any more real."

Ghoul knew even as he said the words that they had come off more cruel than he had intended them. Prester John only laughed. "No, it doesn't. But people will believe all the same."

"I guess so. But those are just people. What I really want to know is what you believe."

"I must admit, I've never seen this side of you before, Brother."

"You don't know me that well."

"I don't," Prester John admitted. His eyes shifted to Ghoul's face, then away again, looking out over the darkness that crowded the corners as if it stretched on for miles. "Do you remember the Great Fires?"

"Yeah," Ghoul said. And then, less steadily. "Mostly, I do."

"It was a time of great suffering. A plague. And all the comfortable people, all the complacent people, who had never before had a need to contemplate suffering, nor know what pities should attend it, in that moment needed a spar to which they could cling. And God was there, but He was not the only god. A rift formed, between the True Believers in Capitalism, who cleaved themselves to Better Living and its wild promises, and the True Believers in Religion, who hid themselves under the shelter of the desert's wings. And so here I am."

"You're one of them," Ghoul said. His eyes narrowed. "And you don't really believe it. You don't believe any of it. But you'd rather be here than there. You really are a scam artist, then. Just like Poison said."

Prester John's eyebrows drew together. A shadow gathered in his eyes. "No. It's not that…"

"It doesn't matter one way or another to me. I think you're on our side."

A hand, skeletal and cold came down on Ghoul's wrist, pinning it to the counter. Ghoul felt his breath welling in the back of his throat, and he managed to turn the cry that threatened to burst out into a sharp exhalation.

"We must set our houses in order," Prester John said. His head was bent, and the voice that came from behind the curtain of pale hair seemed not like his own. "For we shall die and not live."

Ghoul tried to free his wrist, but Prester John's grip was iron. "In time," he said, in a voice so soft that Ghoul should have had to strain to hear any of it. Should have, but did not. "In time, we'll get out of this mess we've made for ourselves."

He let go abruptly, and stood up. Without a word, he turned and went back, leaving Ghoul to fumble with the lantern and trail after him.

When he got close enough, he realized that Poison was scrutinizing them very closely. "What were you talking about?" he said.

"Nothing," Ghoul said. "Dumb stuff."

"Come here. Let me see the scar."

Ghoul leaned over to oblige, but before Poison could get a good look at him, his eyes snapped to Prester John. "You're leaving?"

Prester John put his hat on. "Do you object to that?"

"You haven't even eaten," Ray said. "You're too young to go around skipping meals like that."

"I said I knew you to be a scam artist," Poison said sharply. "Now that you see where you stand with me, I don't have a problem with your presence here. Sit down."

"I wouldn't want to be beholden," said Prester John in the same wry tone as earlier, the one that suggested he and Poison were simply playing parts in a crude satire. He removed his hat and sat down.

* * *

Later, as Ghoul was making up a bed for himself on the billiards table, it occurred to him that Poison had been acting strangely. You never could tell with Poison, that was true, but Ghoul was sure that something had changed him while he was off with Prester John getting his stitches out.

Some fierce protectiveness had been aroused in him, or, if not protectiveness, than jealousy. Either seemed absurd. Prester John was wispy, bone-thin, so slight and pale that he was almost translucent. That Poison might have considered him a threat or a rival could have made Ghoul laugh. But he didn't laugh, he shuddered to his very bones.

"Poison?" he said suddenly, not turning to look at the place where he moved softly in the darkness.

"Yes?" Poison's voice came back.

"There's plenty of room over here. Why don't you share with me?"

The offer was out, and Ghoul felt bold and defiant for having made it, though neither Ray nor Prester John seemed to notice or care in the slightest.

"Of course," Poison said. It didn't seem to matter much to him either where he slept, but he came. Folding his jacket into a pillow, he laid down on the patchy green felt of the billiard table. Ghoul climbed up beside him, and he found himself falling immediately, with no forethought at all, into the crook of Poison's arm.

His head was on Poison's shoulder, and one arm was flung across his chest. He clenched his fingers in the fabric of Poison's shirt, and Poison's arm went around him.

"You seem uneasy around me."

"Do I? I just…" Ghoul started to say something, but he never finished. Ray put out the lantern and darkness closed over them. Ghoul wanted to shut his eyes, to stop thinking for a while, but it was no good. He was wide awake.

Beside him, Poison was very still. He thought at first that he was asleep, but then he felt Poison's hand pass gently over his hair.

"I'm sorry," Ghoul whispered. "This table isn't very comfortable."

"It's fine."

"You're probably used to much better. I bet you had a really nice bed back home."

"I don't want to talk about that place."

Ghoul felt a jolt of yearning go through him. It was not sexual longing, but it was something like it. "Please?" he heard himself say hoarsely. "I won't ask you about anything else, I promise. Just tell me about the bed. I've never slept in a real bed before. Maybe a long time ago, before the troubles started. But I was just a little kid back then. I don't remember. I want to know what it's like."

"All right," Poison said softly. But he was quiet for so long that Ghoul was afraid this time he really had fallen asleep. When he finally began to speak again, his words were halting and fitful.

"It was big. Wider than this table, and a little longer too. It stood on four legs, which were carved to look like the heads of wolves. The frame was cherry wood. That's wood with a kind of reddish hue to it. The headboard was iron. A row of iron bars, and each one was pointed at the top. There was a chain – No. No, there was not that. The sheets were always white, and they were very stiff with starch. They changed them every day."

"Were they that shiny stuff? Ghoul said. "Like they sometimes make ladies dresses out of?"

"Silk?" Poison sounded amused. "No, just cotton. There was a blanket. It was blue and plain. I had two pillows, feather ones. They replaced them often, whenever they started getting flat."

He paused, shifting where he lay. When he spoke again, he seemed to be choosing his words very carefully.

"When I was very young, I had a stuffed rabbit that I slept with. It disappeared one night, and I did not ask where it had gone. For some time after that, when I was alone, I would hold a pillow in my arms and sleep curled up with it."

Poison breathed a sigh. He'd talked a lot just then, by his standards, and he must have been tired. Ghoul stroked his fingertips gently along the rise of his ribs.

"I think if I could have just one night in a bed like that, I'd never ask for anything else again."

"I'm sorry," Poison whispered. "I'm sorry that you have suffered."

"Thanks. I like hearing you say that."

"I would have thought you'd be the type of person who didn't want anyone's pity."

"No, I don't mind pity," Ghoul said. "Pity never hurt anyone except in their pride, and I don't have a lot of that, to be honest. Besides, I don't think you meant it as pity."

"No, I did not. But I was afraid of being misunderstood."

"Well, I understood you perfectly. So there." Ghoul shut his eyes. "Goodnight."

"Good night," Poison said. And after that, Ghoul really did sleep.


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

The highway wavered, uncertain, in the afternoon heat, giving the illusion that the horizon had been submerged. Poison was heading east again, which even now he did frequently, though no longer with any hope of making progress.

Three times now, Poison had brought them within sight of the Firebreak – the heavily fortified, heavily guarded no-man's land that ringed the outer perimeter of the Zones – and three times he had turned away, easing the Trans Am off the main highway and onto one of the dusty access roads that doubled back or snaked away into the desert. Ghoul did not complain or question this, though he had always taken very seriously Poison's promise to lead them far away. He knew that Poison took it seriously too, but he hesitated. And Ghoul had, by now, guessed the truth: Poison was afraid.

Not afraid of chancing the Firebreak, the innumerable remote drones and SCARECROW patrols that stood guard over it. Those things did not frighten him, and they did not frighten Ghoul either, so long as he didn't think too hard about them. It was what lay beyond the last security checkpoint, the final coil of barbed wire on the Sheriff Joe Arpaio Memorial Border Crossing that held them back. Ray had realized the monstrous truth of it first, but Poison had not taken long to catch on: they could hope for nothing outside of the Zones. Three undocumented fugitives would not find anything waiting for them in the free flyover cities, amongst those people who had troubles of their own, and who knew nothing of Battery City save what Better Living's brilliant PR department chose to show them.

When Ghoul and Poison had still been staying at The Killjoy, Dr. Death had told them about something that had happened in prison. He almost never talked about the time he had spent there unless he was especially hammered, and even into this story he had not allowed the personal pronoun to enter. He had begun with, "one time…" as if it had all happened to someone else.

He had said that, in Alameda Street Jail, there had been three environmental activists. They'd been handcuffing themselves to trees and scuttling whaling vessels since long before the troubles started, and so they had achieved a kind of celebrity amongst people who were into that kind of thing. But they had been critical of Better Living's business practices, the gallons of toxic sludge they had used to smother the flames during the Great Fire, and their protests had earned them all ten year sentences, without hope of parole.

Their friends – the celebrities who had done photo ops with them and given donations and attended their charity events – managed to get the word out. It was all over Twitter for a couple of days, Dr. Death had said with gravitas. Better Living enacted damage control. They grabbed the three environmentalists out of Alameda and rushed them off to the low-security facility in the foothills. There, they stuffed them full of cheap carbs to take the emaciated edges off their faces, and they called in a make-up artist to take care of the rest. They coached them in what to say, and they warned them to keep the story straight or have a second prison term added on to the one they were already serving. Then they sat them down in front of computers, in cells that had been done up to resemble middleclass condos, and they made them record.

Smiling into the cameras, those three devoted revolutionaries had told everyone how shocked they were by what was being said about them. They had felt compelled to set the record straight. True, they hadn't been as active in the movement lately, but they were preoccupied with their careers and their families. They kept the videos short – Better Living had warned them not to bore people by going over five minutes – and not one of them stepped out of line.

There was nothing anyone could do. Retractions of the original story were made. Requests for interviews were met with polite offers to conduct them via email. This, of course, was so that they could be monitored by Better Living handlers. A lot of people claimed that they had known it was nothing all along.

Naturally, Dr. Death had said, they all got second terms anyway. And then he had exploded into laughter, as if he had just told the long awaited punchline to a joke.

Poison had not laughed. He'd just sat there in stiff, offended dignity, wooden-faced and unreadable. But he'd been listening then, Ghoul knew, and that was why he hadn't yet attempted to go up directly against any of the countless tentacles of his father's vast empire.

For now, he kept to the backroads and bided his time. Waiting for a sign, a portent, for something to happen. And then, when something finally did, it was so abrupt that none of them quite knew what to do.

Poison eased his foot off the accelerator. Ghoul, who had been staring out the window, watching the scorched monotony of the wasteland without really seeing it, was slow to notice.

"What's going on?" Ray said. "Why are you slowing down?"

"Someone's behind us," Poison said. His gaze strayed to the rearview mirror. The needle on the speedometer kept dropping, dropping. Down past 65, past 50, to 45 where Poison held it steady with a delicate touch. It seemed an intolerable crawl.

Ghoul turned in his seat to look out the back window. The car behind them shivered in the heat on the highway, blurring into an indistinct smudge against the blacktop. It fell out of sight behind a hill, appeared again. Definitely making up the ground.

"Who are they?" Ghoul said.

Poison glanced at him, his gray eyes clouding momentarily with irritated contempt. "I have no way of knowing."

Chastised, Ghoul sank back. The car came steadily on, and by now he could make out that it was a late-90's Toyota coup. Gold once, but scraped and faded down to the primer in most places. As it came up behind them, it flashed its high beams.

Poison tapped the brakes and began to pull over. Ghoul fumbled with the clasp on his holster, jerking the pistol free gracelessly.

"Take it easy," Poison said. And then, mercifully, he added, "Both of you."

The Toyota followed them over onto the shoulder with the whine of worn-out brakes. The exhaust trailed a plume of bluish smoke. Poison cut the engine and slid out into the blistering desert heat. Ghoul scrambled after him, and Ray followed. They kept back by the car, watching the Toyota, though they could see nothing through the tinted windows.

After what seemed a long time, the doors opened. Only a fraction of an inch, as if whoever was inside the Toyota could barely muster the strength to swing them outward.

Two men and a woman climbed out. They might have been young – younger even than Poison and Ghoul – but it was impossible to tell their true ages. None of them had sunglasses, and the whites of their eyes were red and desiccated with sunburn. The dirt on their faces was streaked with tracks from damaged and leaking tear ducts.

Poison stepped forward. Ghoul, sensing that he had a function to perform in this ritual, stayed back by the car, his hand on his pistol, Secret Service or a Royal Guard.

After a moment, the woman who had been in the Toyota came forward to meet him. Her posture was crooked, her hair a filthy cloud around her head; her clothes were in rags, and through the gaping holes in the material, Ghoul could see that her skin was pitted with sores. On her sunken cheeks, she had drawn three symmetrical lines in black ash.

"We're unarmed," she said. One of her front teeth was missing, and the one beside it was so black and sorry looking that it seemed it would soon follow. "Our batteries went dead a long time ago. We're hungry. We haven't had anything in days. Can you spare some food?"

Poison was silent for a long time. He wore his aviators, obscuring his expression, but Ghoul knew that the look in his eyes was hard, pitiless, metallic, and calculating.

"Do you have anything to trade?" he said at last.

"Some motor oil. It's 40-weight."

"Any gasoline?"

"We're running on fumes as it is."

Poison's lips tightened into something that looked like a smile. "I don't think that will get you much."

Ray stepped forward and grabbed Poison by the shoulder. Back by the Toyota, one of the men, who had been keeping careful watch, fumbled a crowbar out of the backseat of the car. Ghoul didn't miss that; he had his pistol out and trained before the stranger could take a step.

But Ray didn't seem to notice any of this. He bent close to Poison's ear, and whispered to him harshly, a lecture which Poison heard out with bored indifference.

"We'll take anything you're willing to give us," the woman said. "We don't want any trouble."

Poison reached up, and with a flick of his wrist he batted Ray's hand off his shoulder. "Then have your dogs get back in the car. Bring me what you have. Ghoul will escort you."

Ghoul straightened up. He wasn't sure what Poison was trying to do – it was clear that these three fugitives could put up no resistance, were no threat to them – but he followed the woman obediently and without complaint around to the back of the Toyota. She unlocked the trunk, struggling beneath its weight as she lifted it. Inside, there was an accumulation of trash: torn canvas tarps, dead batteries, a radio with its mechanical guts spilling out.

As she dug through the garbage, Ghoul shifted uncomfortably. He sheathed his pistol; it seemed pointless and cruel to have it out. "I'm sorry about him. He's not usually like that…"

"Never mind," she said. "It doesn't matter. Your name is Ghoul, right? I've heard of you."

"I don't think so—" he started to say.

"You're not at all like I imagined you'd be."

"You must have me mistaken for someone else."

"Fine," she said. "Have it your way."

From the depths of the trunk, she extracted the plastic bottle of motor oil. It was streaked with filth, gritty with dust. Before she could pull away, Ghoul caught hold of her wrist. She looked up at him, startled, and he immediately released her. There had been an unpleasant coldness to her skin, and he had felt each tiny bone and tendon shifting beneath his hand.

"Listen," he said. "How long have you been out here?"

"Two years," she said.

"That's it?" Ghoul said. "I mean… it's not that long. Is this… all of this… normal?"

Slowly, dreamily, she raised her hand to her mouth and chewed on her thumbnail, which had already been bitten down to blood. "You really must be new out here. That's so weird. I could have sworn… I guess it doesn't matter. You'll figure things out soon enough. Maybe."

Ghoul didn't know what to say. He turned the bottle of motor oil over in his hands. "Thanks for this," he muttered, and headed back to the Trans Am. Poison was waiting for him. He tossed the motor oil in the trunk without looking at it, and thrust a sack into the woman's hands.

"Thanks," she said. "We're really grateful."

"You ought to be," Poison said. "It's pure charity."

He looked at Ghoul, sweeping his gaze over him as if to check every part of him for injury or malice. "Let's go," he said quietly.

Poison slid in behind the wheel, gunned the engine and put his foot down heavy on the pedal. A fan of gravel arched from beneath the tires, spattering the hood of the Toyota. Poison did not look back. His eyes never once stirred to the rearview mirror.

He got back on the main highway and headed east.

* * *

That evening, when they had not come across a place to spend the night by the time full dark came on, Poison eased the Trans Am down the incline into a dry creekbed where it was hidden from the road. It was not the first time they had slept out in the open, and by now they had a system in place. They played two rounds of rock-paper-scissors to see who would take the first watch. Ghoul's number came up, and so he stayed behind with the car while Poison and Ray went to scavenge firewood.

The temperature dropped off quickly now that the sun was down, and Ghoul crawled into the backseat to wait. As he hugged himself against the dry desert chill, his head fell back against the seat and his eyes drifted shut. He knew that Poison would be furious if he came back and found him asleep at his post, but Ghoul had long ago accepted that there were some things Poison could not understand. Simple things like weakness and frailty and exhaustion, which simply did not seem to apply to him.

But that was stupid. Because if Poison did not feel such things, or even not _quite_ feel them, then what else could he possibly feel instead?

It was not a question that needed an answer, or even was supposed to have one. As Ghoul dozed in the back of the Trans Am, thinking this over in a confused half-sleeping way, headlights came up the dirt road toward him. It took Ghoul a long time to realize it, a long time to connect the sound of an engine mixed with the wind with the actuality of an approaching vehicle. When he finally did, his eyes snapped open. He stumbled out of the backseat, just in time to see the car fly past, a howling phantom doing 60 or 70.

The car did not slow. In its wake, the air filled with a cloud of red dust, in which two red tail lights rapidly floated out of sight.

Ghoul leaned against the car, his arms folded on the roof and his head resting on them. He slipped a hand absently under his coat, touching the holster that hung from his shoulder. His heart was pounding and he felt a strange current of unease moving through him. It was nothing, he told himself. He had been awakened suddenly, and that was all. But when a hand came down on his shoulder, he jumped.

"It's only me," Poison said. His brows drew together, making an ugly crease appear in the center of his forehead. "What's wrong?"

"Someone was here," Ghoul said.

"Where?"

Ghoul waved vaguely towards where the tail lights had disappeared.

"Did they see you?" Poison said.

"I don't think so. If they did, they didn't care." Ghoul paused. "I don't think it's anything."

"I'm sure it's not. But I think we should move elsewhere."

"No," Ghoul said. "No, it's fine. I'm sure it's fine. You just feel, you know, weird. After today. I feel weird too. That girl… did you catch her name?"

"No," Poison said.

"She told me they'd only been out here two years. Two years, and they looked like that. I think they were dying or something."

"I think they might die soon," Poison said. "Yes."

"Doesn't that freak you out? We should have done something. I wish I'd—"

"If you wanted to help people you would still be back with your little terrorist cell," Poison said sharply. "Wasn't that what you were doing? Breaking your back taking care of everyone who would not take care of themselves. Who did not want your care, and who, in fact, hated you for trying to give it. But you aren't like them. You are like me, and you can look after yourself. If you couldn't, then you would never have kissed me, never have taken the key to those handcuffs, never have done anything that you have done."

Ghoul shuddered. "Don't say that. You don't know anything about them…"

"I know that if they had been smarter, or stronger, or more resourceful they wouldn't be in the trouble they're in. You said the exact same thing, when _he_ asked to join us. You said there was something about him, and that was why he deserved to live…"

"I didn't say that!" Ghoul had thought his voice was going to come out in a shout, and he was surprised when he couldn't manage more than a rough whisper. "Just stop it… stop talking…"

And, mercifully, Poison did, when a soft sound came from the darkness at the bottom of the streambed behind him.

"Sorry to interrupt," Ray said. He was crouched down in the windbreak formed by a tangle of cottonwoods, over a carefully constructed tripod of firewood. "Can I use your lighter?"

Poison straightened up, turning away. He tossed the lighter over, and Ghoul sagged weakly back against the car. He watched them start the fire, watched them move about it like shades, kicking rocks aside and tamping down the grass where they were going to sleep. They no longer seemed like the men he knew, but instead like strange and gaudy characters who had appeared before him on a screen.

After a while, Ghoul realized he was cold and he came over beside the fire. He was aware of Poison watching him, but he was resolved not to look in his direction. It turned out to be easier than he'd thought it would be. He heated a can of food from their dwindling supplies in the coals and ate it without tasting anything. When he was finished, Poison, who had clearly been waiting, stood up and motioned to him silently.

Ghoul pretended not to see, and then, when he realized he couldn't keep it up, he looked toward Ray for salvation. Ray only motioned with his head, giving him leave to go. Ghoul sighed, and got to his feet. He followed Poison down the creekbed, only fifty yards or so. The fire was still in sight, but they were well out of the halo of light that it cast.

"I'm sorry," Poison said.

"Yeah?" Ghoul felt himself weakening, like he always did when Poison offered him one of his plain and unadorned apologies, but this time he resisted it. "Good. I kind of think you should be."

Poison turned to look at him. In the darkness, Ghoul could make out nothing of his expression, but he felt that Poison could see him perfectly. "Did I… insult you?" he said. It was a wild guess; a shot in the dark.

"Maybe a little," Ghoul admitted. "But it wasn't—"

"I thought I understood who you were."

"Well, I thought I understood who you were too." That had sounded stupid. Ghoul laughed weakly at himself. His night vision was starting to kick in, and he could see the sharply-delineated line where Poison's dark collar broke off and his white throat began. He reached up suddenly, cupping the pale quarter moon of Poison's jaw, slipping his fingers under his hair.

"Anyway," he said quietly. "It's not about me. Or… about anyone, really. But those things you said, it wasn't you. It was like it was your father saying them. I didn't like it."

While he spoke, his thumb had moved back along Poison's cheek, had found the hinge of his jaw, his earlobe. Had found, without forethought or planning and by touch alone, the small tattoo, the barcode, that was concealed there. It was that spot that he was stroking now, and in that instant they both realized it.

Poison jerked away from him. Ghoul withdrew his hand as if he had been stung.

"Don't," Poison said. "Please, don't. You can say anything you like to me, but not that."

"You're not him, you know."

"I am him," Poison whispered. "I am his genetic material. I'm his son. I am him, right down to the cells. They were his in whole before they were mine, and I have them only second-hand…"

"Gerard," Ghoul said sharply. He had hoped the name would have an effect, and it did. Poison flinched, but then lowered his head as if awaiting punishment. "You're not him, so quit worrying about it."

He reached out and took Poison's hand. It felt cool in his. "No one knows where you came from. Out here, no one even cares."

"You know," Poison said. "You care." His eyes flicked up, and for a split-second Ghoul thought that he detected a hint of spite in them. But no, it must have been his imagination.

"I guess I do," Ghoul admitted. "I can't just forget. What do you want me to do instead?"

"Let me forget," Poison said instantly. "Never call me that other name again."

Ghoul sighed. "All right. Whatever you want, Poison. Poison, Poison, Poison, Poison, Poison." He laughed abruptly. "When you say it too many times, it doesn't even sound like a name at all anymore."

"Good," Poison said. Ghoul did not know that he was going to kiss him until Poison had already leaned in and done it.

Ghoul's heart went into his throat. His hands pawed blindly at the front of Poison's jacket, slipping over the unyielding leather, until at last they encountered his collar and there they clung tight. Poison backed him into the shadows of a cottonwood hollow, until Ghoul was pressed up against one of the smooth sturdy trunks. A bouquet of hanging catkins burst beneath the weight of his body, flooding the night with the smell of pollen.

"You don't…" Ghoul panted when Poison had finally released his mouth. "You don't…"

"I want to," Poison said. "Can't I still want you?"

His mouth descended onto Ghoul's throat, and Ghoul felt the hot liquidity of his breath, the sharp insistent edges of his teeth. His fingers convulsed, digging into Poison's shoulders. "Yes…"

As Poison fumbled with their belts, Ghoul did his best to stay out of his way. Poison knew what he liked, how he wanted things done, and if Ghoul interfered with that he would only complicate the matter. He had never been fucked the way Poison fucked him; after Poison was gone, he never would be again. Ghoul had accepted all of this without sentimentality or emotion, just the way things ought to be.

Poison slid to his knees, and when he bent his head forward his hair fell over his face, hiding it. Ghoul could feel the ragged edges brushing the insides of his thighs as Poison leaned in press his lips to the head of his cock. Ghoul shuddered, pressing the heel of one hand against his mouth to stifle a moan. Poison did not hurry – he had never hurried this – and his tongue made a slow circle around Ghoul's cock. The hand that was curled around the base revolving in practiced turns.

His other hand was down between his legs. He was stroking himself, slowly at first but then with increasing urgency as Ghoul grew tense and began to whimper beneath him. Ghoul plunged his free hand into Poison's hair, jerking it hard, maybe even hurting him. He never knew; Poison never complained.

Ghoul pulled him forward, thrusting into his mouth. Poison gave a muffled cry, little more than a vibration sliding up from the back of his throat, tripping along the roof of his mouth, but he didn't resist. He simply adjusted his angle and bore down hard. The hand between his legs was moving faster now, in hard blistering strokes.

And Ghoul just kept pulling on his hair, kept forcing him, as if he hated him, as if he were furious. He had been furious, but he was quickly forgetting why.

When it was over, Poison stayed down on his knees, his head bent forward. His shoulders heaved a few times as he caught his breath, and then he passed the back of his hand delicately over his lips, swiping them clean.

Ghoul realized that he was still gripping Poison's hair, and he made his hand relax. The sweat-stiff strands of hair had tangled around his fingers, and Ghoul ripped a lot of them loose when he pulled away. Poison did not even flinch.

"Hey…" Ghoul heard himself say, but he didn't know how to follow it up.

Eventually, Poison got to his feet. His face was solemn, composed. With him, you always knew right where you stood.

"Give me a minute, okay?" said Ghoul. He reached out, stroking the side of Poison's face with his knuckles. This time, he stopped well-clear of the spot where he knew the barcode was.

"You still have the first watch," Poison reminded him.

"I know, I know. But just like… one minute by myself. That's all I need."

"All right," Poison said, and he turned and went back toward the circle of firelight.

Ghoul remained behind, not knowing why he had wanted a moment alone but feeling like he had been granted a special favor in receiving it. Poison, he thought, would not have asked if their positions had been reversed.

He let his head fall back against the tree with a solid thump. Somewhere out in the desert, the coyotes chattered ceaselessly. The wind was in the branches of the cottonwood, and the grass sung in the wind. All was in its place and as it should have been, and so he never suspected anything was wrong. Later, he would have time to think how they had not even attempted stealth. He had heard the running footsteps, crunching clumsily through the undergrowth. He had turned, too suddenly, off balance, forgetting his pistol entirely and putting up his arms to shield his face.

It hadn't done any good. A weight had crashed down on him out of the darkness. He didn't feel any pain, but his vision had been filled with red light.

He staggered two steps, already senseless, and then he collapsed into darkness.


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

When Ghoul awoke, there was a hole in his memory.

He remembered leaving camp with Poison, remembered what they had talked about. All of that was very clear. Then, he remembered Poison getting on his knees, the unsettling combination of penitence and hunger there had been in the gesture. After that, there was a clean break. He couldn't even remember the blowjob, the orgasm. The last thing he could recall was the red, red shock of Poison's hair as he bowed his head in the moonlight.

Now, he was somewhere else, and a voice in his head was telling him over and over not to open his eyes.

He kept them closed, and stretched out with his other senses instead. The wind was still screaming, but he couldn't feel it on his face. He was inside, then, he thought. Inside somewhere, and sitting on the floor, an his legs were bent beneath him.

As soon as he became aware of this, he became aware that he hurt all over. His head was the worst. A low, steady pain throbbed there, rising and falling with the beat of his heart. The side of his face felt stiff and itchy; his hair was matted against his cheek with drying blood. He twitched minutely, then forced himself to keep still.

His wrists were bound behind his back, so tightly that his fingers were completely numb. He flexed one, and the tendons in his wrist shifted against a coil of wire. The wire cut into his skin; a bead of blood formed around it, burst, and rolled slowly down his thumb.

Suddenly, he felt very calm. He was not afraid at all. He was not going to panic. Slowly, methodically, he brought his arms forward, testing the bonds. The wire around his wrists was also twisted around the leg of a table, and when Ghoul pulled against it, it brought him up short with a stab of pain that raced up the whole length of his forearms.

He uncurled the fingers of his right hand; flexing them drove some of the numbness out. Moving carefully now, behind the shield of his own body, careful to keep his eyes closed and his expression one of lax unconsciousness, he felt around the base of the table leg. There was a pool of blood from his cut wrists on the floor, cold and half-congealed. That, he ignored.

His fingers encountered a metal bracket bolted to the leg of the table, and then to the floor. There was no escaping that way. He would bide his time, Ghoul thought with perfect, confident clarity. He knew it was not SCARECROW that had him, because if they had come upon him then he would not be alive now. Whoever it was, they would be clumsy. They would be careless. He would have to watch for that and be ready.

And besides, Poison would come.

The thought brought Ghoul up short. Yes, of course Poison would come. Because he owed Ghoul his life, and in his strange and twisty moral code that meant he ought to pay off the debt as soon as possible.

Maybe, he would even come for another reason, too.

Somewhere, a door opened. The wind was momentarily louder, loud enough to obscure the voices of the people who entered. Ghoul froze, holding his breath until he realized that he was supposed to be pretending to be unconscious not _dead_. He slitted one eye open, peering out through his lashes.

He recognized the bone-thin girl they had met on the highway. She was standing over him, and he could see that her canvas shoes were starting to separate from the soles. In the light of the kerosene lantern, the bags under her eyes looked like indelible stains.

"You haven't even done it yet?" she said.

"I was about to." A man's voice, somewhere off on his left. Ghoul couldn't see him.

"I'm going to go wait outside," she said. "But promise you'll call me. Call me as soon as it's done."

This was met with a laugh, crude and raucous. "Tesla…"

There it was. Her name. In spite of everything, Ghoul was relieved.

"I don't care what you think," Tesla said. "I'm hungry. I need to eat something. I had a leather wallet. I boiled it and chewed on the flaps just so my mouth wouldn't forget what it was like to have something in it. I found a dead dog in a ditch on the side of the road. It wasn't one of the monsters, either. It was like a regular dog. It had been baking in the sun, but it was still pretty fresh. I fought the vultures for that. I ate all of it. The guts. Fucking everything. I used to think I'd never resort to this, but here I am. So don't give me any shit. Just give me the meat we agreed on. And take it from somewhere that doesn't look like - I don't know - an arm or something."

Again, that loud – too loud – voice. "You came in here all alone. You're pretty tough for a girl."

"I'm not afraid of you," she said. But Ghoul saw her glance towards the door, gauging the distance, how long it would take her to sprint. "I'm just skin and bones. Not even good for soup."

"I just don't know about that."

Tesla realized what was happening. Ghoul could almost see the knowledge come over her. Her body tensed, preparing for the first big stride that would carry her to the door, the second that would take her off the stoop of the little shack…

The door swung open. Again, there was the sound of wind, and heavy boots on the plank floor of the shack. The two men who entered were big, corded with lean muscle. They were both blond and blue-eyed – so similar that they might have been relatives – and they both dragged a corpse behind them. Ghoul recognized them as the two boys from the Toyota, Tesla's guards. The ones Poison had called her dogs.

Their throats had been cut with ruthless medical efficiency. From where he sat, even through the awkward window of one cracked eyelid, Ghoul could see that their heads were bent back so far that they almost touched the spots between their shoulder blades. They bumped against the doorway and snapped back into place.

Tesla didn't cry out. She didn't waste even that much time. Already she was in flight, lowering her shoulder like a linebacker as she ran, catching the big blond in the doorway below the sternum, shoving him out of her way. She got past them, still running, but there was probably some part of her that knew even then that she didn't have much hope of making it.

Her feet tangled in the legs of one of the corpses, and only then, as she was falling, did she let out a scream. It cut off abruptly when she hit the ground, the breath knocked out of her. It was quiet for two seconds, three, and then the screaming started up again. It rose, like the wind, into a piercing wail, and then it fell off again, replaced by a wet, bubbling noise. The sound of a throat still trying to scream as it filled up with blood.

Ghoul had kept still through all of it, but now he felt bile burning its way up the back of his throat. He fought it down. He had almost conquered it, when a fist slammed without warning into the side of his face.

His eyes flew open, his head snapping to the side. A wave of dizziness washed over him. The fist felt like it had been about a mile in diameter, like it had been reinforced with steel. It had hit him on the gash on his scalp, or at least close enough to count. Ghoul could feel fresh blood running down the side of his face.

He looked up, pressing his lips tight. Even now, some of the old military pride was stirring in him. He didn't want to show that he was afraid.

There were four of them gathered around him. All with the same thick blond curls, the same chiseled cheekbones, the same blue eyes. Even the same uniform: fitted jeans and polo shirts. They could have been brothers, Ghoul thought, and maybe they were. Maybe cannibalism was a family tradition around these parts.

"I would have paid her," said the polished polite voice of their leader. "For meat this good, I would have paid a lot. But I can't resist a sweet deal."

He said it like it was a joke, but no one laughed.

"You fucking asshole," Ghoul said suddenly. At first he didn't know it was him that had spoken; it hadn't sounded like his voice at all. "Your fratboy ass is going to be sorry..."

The massive fist descended again, smashing across his jaw, and Ghoul's consciousness winked out.

This time he wasn't under for long, only a minute or two at most. The wind was gusting harder now, rattling the windows of the shack in their panes and making the roof groan. And there was another sound, too: a brisk, rhythmic slapping.

Ghoul forced his eyes open. He could only see out of the left; the right was swollen completely shut.

The slapping sound, it turned out, was the noise a long butcher knife made when it was stropped on a strip of leather. The big blond, the one in charge, was making no effort to hide what he was doing. He didn't care if Ghoul saw, and why should he? Ghoul was nothing but meat to him.

All at once, he stopped, and hung the leather strap back on the wall. For some reason the fact that he was so neat, so fastidious, made Ghoul's head swim and for a moment he thought he would pass out again. It would have been better if he did…

But then the blond started towards him, and Ghoul rallied himself.

"Fuck you," he said. "Get the fuck away from me. Don't touch—"

That was as far as he got. The blond planted a massive knee in his back and bent him forward. Ghoul's wrists strained against the wire wrapped around them and it dug in deep. A hot pulse of blood burst over his hands, and he screamed. He screamed again as the huge fist plunged into his hair, jerking his head back and baring his throat.

And then he saw his own hands, as they plunged into Poison's hair and urged him on. And the parabola of Poison's back, and his hand own hand buried between his legs… And, oh god, was he going to remember this now?

The knife crossed in front of him. Ghoul couldn't move his head, but he watched it with his eyes, the smooth practiced half-circle it made. The point dug in below his left ear, and he felt the hand that held it tensing, tensing for the only cut it would need to make.

But then, the knife was taken away. The big blond still stayed crouched over him for a moment, but then he stood up. When he took his knee off Ghoul's back, Ghoul tried to straighten himself out, but a stabbing pain between his shoulder blades brought him up short. He moaned, and the blond knocked him in the ribs with the toe of his boot.

"Shut up," he said, and Ghoul did. He could hear it now. Over the howl of the wind or under it. It didn't matter. The sound of a car engine.

The windows of the shack filled with the white glow of approaching headlights. The big blond waved to his little brothers, and they dispersed, two of them taking up spots on either side of the door, one in the back.

Outside, the engine cut off. To Ghoul, it seemed like a long time before he heard footsteps on the porch outside. The door swung open, neither cautious nor urgent, but just as if it were signaling the arrival of a late but expected guest.

Poison stepped inside. His pistol was still on his hip; his hand was not even on the grip.

The big blond folded his arms across his chest, thrusting his chin out. "What do you want, faggot?"

"I want my friend back," Poison said mildly.

The blond laughed. The younger brother to the left of the door brought out the hunting rifle he had taken down from the rack and laid the muzzle against Poison's temple.

Poison compressed his lips. "If you've hurt him, I'm going to be angry."

"Toss your gun over here," the blond said, and Poison did without complaint.

"I wasn't planning on using it."

"You're the one who came in here trying to start shit," the blond said. He came forward a step now that Poison was unarmed. "Your boyfriend is going to be breakfast. That dumb bitch who brought him here is going to be lunch. And you're going to be—"

He didn't get to finish. Poison's right hand snapped out, and he jammed his palm up into the big blond's nose. There was a pop as the cartilage crumpled, and the blond went down without a word. The hunting rifle went off, but it was no longer aimed at Poison's head. He had brought his left hand up under the barrel and lifted it, so that the bullet blew a harmless hole in the ceiling.

Poison moved fast, too fast. He swept in low, hit the one with the rifle once in the diaphragm. The breath rushed out of him in a sharp cough, and he let go of the gun. But that could not have been right. It was a trick, Ghoul thought, of the low light, of shock, of something. Because otherwise it was not possible.

Poison was still holding onto the barrel, and he swung it once, overhead, like a sling, and then hit the cannibal full in the side of the face.

The stock broke off. The cannibal hit the floor, dead weight all the way down.

By now the last two had recovered and they had their knives out and were closing in. Poison grabbed the lantern from the shelf by the door and dashed it on the ground. Glass shattered, and the fire momentarily blazed up, and then died out with a sound like a long sigh.

The shack was in darkness.

There was a cry that sounded like surprise, and then one of pain. Staggering footsteps and then a heavy blow that put an end to them. Ghoul could see nothing, but in the darkness it was worse.

A gun went off. He heard the shot ricochet impotently, far off, but he was glad for the excuse to put his head down. The screaming started again, then stopped abruptly, mid sound; then came once more and trailed off into silence. Something heavy hit the table he was bound to, jarring Ghoul's bleeding wrists, but he did not even whimper. Another blow came, and this one he almost didn't feel at all. Then a third, and silence except for the sound of some fast-flowing liquid dripping on the shack's wooden floor.

A few warm drops rolled off the table and down the back of Ghoul's neck. He didn't look up to see where they came from. He knew that they were blood.

Poison crouched down beside him. "It's all right. They're gone."

His nose was broken, smashed flat against his face. It had bled a lot, and the blood had curtained the bottom half of Poison's face. In the low light, it looked black.

"Cut me loose," Ghoul said. It was not his normal voice; it was a wail.

"All right," Poison replied. He started to straighten up, but Ghoul suddenly turned to him.

"They were going to…"

He didn't finish, but Poison nodded in understanding. "Yes, I know."

"You remember that girl? Her name's Tesla. I found out."

"I'll look for some wire cutters," Poison said, as if he had not heard. He pushed to his feet. Something heavy slid across the floor of the shack. A dark shape hunched in the darkness. Ghoul flinched away, drawing his knees up, but Poison was watching it with cat-like intensity.

He moved toward it, taking slow and somnambulistic steps. He took down a hammer from one of the pegs on the wall as he went.

The dark shape moved again, and this time Ghoul could make out yellow hair, as the big blond lifted his head into a wedge of moonlight. He half turned, and saw Poison coming towards him. When he tried to speak, Poison drove a quick slashing kick into his ribs and knocked the wind out of him.

He swung one leg over the big blond's massive shoulders, straddling him. And he raised the hammer.

Ghoul squeezed his eyes shut, but he still heard everything.

He couldn't make himself look, even when he knew it was over and everything was silent except the wind. Poison came back and knelt beside him. He took hold of one of Ghoul's arms and held it still, lowered a pair of shears and started to cut through the wire around his wrists.

Ghoul opened his mouth. All that came out was a dry sob.

"Try not to move," Poison said.

"Gerard…"

"Don't."

But he couldn't stop. "Gerard… Gerard…"

Poison slapped him. It was only a tap, and it didn't hurt at all, but Ghoul shut up. Poison finished cutting through the wire, and pulled the strands out of the cuts they had made on Ghoul's wrists. They had gone in deep and taken off a lot of skin; Ghoul didn't need to see to know that.

"Take a breath," Poison said, and Ghoul sucked in a gulp of air. He turned out to need it, because when Poison hauled him to his feet the gash on his head sent currents of pain through him. Poison half-carried him, past the bodies which Ghoul saw as whirling apparitions. Three corpses with cut throats stacked like cordwood against the wall of the shack, a knife wedged up to the hilt in the socket of an eye, a head listing at an impossible angle on its broken neck, a red pulp that had been a face.

Ghoul thought he was going to be sick, but he didn't even have the strength for that.

Outside, the wind was gusting hard, and the air was choked with red dust. Poison clamped his keffiyeh over Ghoul's mouth and held it there. The lights of the Trans Am came on, illuminating their way. Ray was behind the wheel, and when Poison opened the door he said something, but Ghoul's head was too full of static to make any sense of it.

He crawled into the back seat and lay down, gripping it as if he expected it to fly away from him at any moment. He pulled the keffiyeh over his face, breathing in the smell of sweat and cigarettes that had sunk into the weave.

There was no time at all between when he closed his eyes and when he fell asleep.


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

For three days, he languished in a fever. When it broke on the afternoon of the fourth, it was only by how much better he felt that Ghoul knew how bad he had really been.

They were back at the ranch house where it had all begun. Ghoul was glad to see it again; the gutted and decaying rooms gave him a sense of security.

By evening, he felt well enough to get up. It was only then that he could take a full accounting of his injuries. His head barely gave him any trouble at all. Just a little concussion, Ray told him with confidence. Nothing to worry about. There wasn't a fracture, at least they were pretty sure there wasn't.

It was his hands that had worried them the most. The wire they had used to bind his wrists probably hadn't been too clean, and it had dug in deep, flaying Ghoul's wrists down to the raw muscle underneath.

"But it doesn't hurt," Ghoul objected. He looked down at his hands. The clean white gauze wrapped around his wrists was a profound mercy. He didn't want to see what was underneath it.

"That's because you're full of Percocet," Ray said. "Absolutely stoned out of your mind."

Ghoul laughed, but Ray had fallen curiously silent. All at once, he began to speak again, very quickly, as if in anticipation of a question that Ghoul had not even thought to ask.

"It belonged to my wife. They prescribed it to her after she dropped a picture frame on her foot and broke her toe, but she didn't like to take it. She never took anything stronger than Aspirin. So the bottle stayed in the medicine cabinet for years, until I found it again. And I held onto it, because I thought there might be enough, if I took it all at once…"

He didn't finish. Ghoul acted as if he had not said anything at all.

"Thanks for letting me have some."

Ray shrugged. "You sure got lucky, kid."

"Yeah, I know." Ghoul had never liked being called "kid" or "son" or any of those stupid diminutives, but this time he didn't complain. He knew it had come from a place of profound concern.

"Anyway," Ray said. "Poison's out on the porch. Do you feel up to seeing him?"

"Sure," Ghoul replied. "Why wouldn't I?"

He had expected to find Poison smoking when he went out to find him, but Poison was sitting empty-handed, quite still, on the edge of the porch. His boots hung over the edge into the red dust and he was looking out over the darkening desert. Whatever was on his mind, he seemed to forget it when Ghoul stepped outside.

Poison got up to meet him. There was a bruise on his face, purple almost to the point of blackness. His broken nose had gotten straightened out at some point, but it was a little flatter than it had been. Ghoul was surprised he had even noticed, it was such a small change.

As he came closer, Poison extended a hand in a cautious, uncertain gesture. Ghoul took hold of it at once.

"Are you feeling better?"

"Yeah," Ghoul said. He shifted his hold on Poison's hand, as subtly as he could, so that only the tips of their fingers touched. Poison had been gripping him hard, hard enough to hurt. "A lot."

"I'm relieved."

Poison was watching him intently. Ghoul glanced away, looking out over the desert. "Thanks… for coming when you did."

"They left a trail. It wasn't difficult to find you."

"Lucky me," Ghoul said. And then, without any warning at all, he started to cry.

"Stop it," Poison said in alarm. He passed his free hand awkwardly over Ghoul's cheek. "Stop it."

And Ghoul did, with the same artless suddenness with which he had begun. "Sorry. I…"

"I don't know what to do when you do that," Poison said. "When I saw that they had you, then I knew exactly what to do, without even stopping to think about it. But when you do that…"

"You don't have to do anything," Ghoul said. He let Poison's hand fall. "Just fucking murder people when I need you to, I guess."

Poison looked at him curiously. "I would murder anyone you asked me to."

Ghoul laughed, because it seemed too ridiculous not to, but his laughter tasted sour, curdled, in his mouth. "That's okay. I think I'm good for now."

Before Poison could answer, Ghoul leaned in to kiss him. A hitch in his back brought him up short, and he fell back on his heels, warned off any more sudden movements.

"Are you sure you're all right?" Poison said.

"Yeah." Ghoul frowned. "Just pulled a muscle or something. That fucking guy…" He trailed off. An image of the big blond's face had appeared momentarily, half-formed in his mind, and then been replaced just as quickly by a pool of red slime spreading across filthy floorboards.

"Never mind," he said softly.

"You should lay down," Poison said. "We can stay here until you've recovered."

"Maybe we shouldn't have ever left in the first place."

Poison did not reply, but Ghoul didn't know what the hell he had expected him to say.

* * *

The next day, the fever had returned.

Poison had been afraid of infection from the first, and he watched Ghoul's hands with wary anxiousness for the first sign that the venom had spread to his blood. They didn't have any antibiotics. Poison knew that Ghoul could lose an arm very easily. If it came to that, he was confident that he would be able to take the limb off without hesitation – he imagined himself doing it quickly, in a single merciful stroke – and he would be able to press a cauterizing brand onto the stump.

Beyond that, he knew, he wouldn't be able to do much good. But he refused to consider, even for a moment, that Ghoul might die.

No, he knew that would not come to pass.

On the second day, the pain in Ghoul's back that he had at first taken for a pulled muscle was much worse. He complained about it in a vague, weak, feverish voice. Poison took notice of this. Ghoul was often irrational, frequently a scold, but he practically never complained about anything.

A secondary hypothesis had begun to take shape in Poison's mind.

When, on the third day, he inspected Ghoul's hands for signs of infection, his fingers were stiff, knotted into fists. They refused to unclench. Poison lingered over this new information for a long time, but in the end decided to say nothing.

Then the fourth day came. Poison tried to force him to take a little water, but the muscles of Ghoul's jaw were so stiff that he could only open his mouth a crack. He had trouble keeping down what little liquid Poison could get into him. Poison crushed one of the painkillers into a powder and made Ghoul swallow it. That seemed to help a little, but even the painkillers were starting to run dangerously low.

"You should have been a nurse," Ray said, when Poison found him out behind the house.

Poison's expression did not waver. "An infection of _Clostridium tetani_."

"What?"

"Tetanus."

Ray folded his arms closely over his chest. "You mean, like, he stepped on a rusty nail?"

"No, rust doesn't cause it," Poison said vaguely. All at once, his eyes hardened. "We will need to find a doctor."

"Where?" Ray said. "Battery City?"

"No. That place is closed to us. So we will have to go to another city. I suppose… doctors are general in all cities?"

He looked to Ray for confirmation. Poison had never been out of Battery City in his life, and he had grown up being told that outside the protective buffer of the Zones there were nothing but refuges of barbarism and crime and terror. But there was always the possibility that, too, had been a lie.

"Sure," Ray said. "Not as good as the Battery doctors, but—"

"No, of course, not nearly as good. But it is treated easily enough."

"So what? You want to head through the Firebreak? It'll be tough without him to help us."

"No," Poison said slowly. "I don't want to do that. But perhaps we could go south."

"You mean across the border? That's even chancier than the Zones."

"We can hire one of the criminal guides. I know that they exist. My father—" He shut his mouth so hard that his teeth made an audible click. "I read about them somewhere."

"How are we going to hire a guide?" Ray said. "They don't come cheap."

"We have your car," Poison said. "And if that is not enough then I will negotiate with them. But Ghoul wouldn't like it if I did that, so we ought to at least try to sell the car first. I know where we will go. You'll drive; I'll navigate. "

"I thought you liked the car…" Ray sighed. He liked the car very much. Maybe he liked it even more than he liked Ghoul, but he knew not to say that out loud.

Poison ignored him. He felt much better now that they had a plan, a course of action, a goal to strive for. He was once more the undisputed master of the situation. Of every situation. And he held sway over everything, even life and death. Even in the wasteland.


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

The Salton City Commune should not have existed within the boundaries of the Zones. It had been granted the status of Free Expression Area seven years ago - at the same time as Idyllwild and Carmel-by the-Sea - but unlike those other settlements, it was still inhabitable. The crush of the gas rationing years, the food shortages, the streams of refugees that had poured into Battery City from the outlying areas, even the pressure from the Better Living Urban Planning Department, had not been able to uproot the last 434 citizens of the Commune.

Of course, they had protection.

The locals called it Salvation Hill, but in internal Better Living memos it was referred to as the Colorado Compound. Five square miles enclosed behind walls twelve feet high, where the Reverend Doctor Josiah Roger Williams had holed up with 300 families composed of his closest followers, and enough guns to hold out until the Apocalypse.

In the early days of the troubles, doomsday cults had been thick on the ground. Better Living had been able to deal with most of them without force. SCARECROW agents had stood by, idle and bored, while Better Living product reps walked those Bible-beating hicks through the highlights of the spring catalogue. Telling them, the economy was in a natural ebb. Everything they had heard, about Battery City being bankrupt, about the state treasury being empty, those were all the lies and gross exaggerations of a scandal-hungry press. What they needed right now was for people to work, to spend their earnings, to get things back on track. Not to wait around for some god to save them.

It turned out that most people didn't want to die, did not even want to fantasize about dying. And for those that did, the doors of Alameda Street Jail were always open.

But the Colorado Compound was different. Josiah Williams had been preaching the Apocalypse before it became popular. He said that he knew the hour, and the day. But the first date he had set was in August of 1984, and it had come and gone without incident. Undeterred, the Reverend had recalibrated the Time of Trials: February 18th, 1990. Again, the date passed. Next, he placed the day on January 1st of the year 2000. Midnight, he told his church. Be prepared at midnight. They were, and nothing happened.

After that, the Reverend dropped out of public view. He was biding his time. Then the troubles began, and they were everything he had been waiting for.

Rich from the donations of flyover city busybodies, the Reverend spared no expense in the construction of the Colorado Compound. They grew their own food, produced all their goods on site. There was a massive chapel that held 2500 people. Power was supplied by a wind farm.

It took a lot of work to keep the place running – rough, manual labor – and a lot of time away from the important task of preparing for the tribulation times. But the Reverend had thought of that, too. He conscripted the remaining citizens of Salton City. They harvested the crops, tended the chickens and cows, sewed long dresses for the women and severe black suits for the men. Some had the foresight to learn a trade: blacksmith, cobbler, tanner, cabinetmaker. Things basic and Colonial, so that the society wits in Battery City began to refer to the Salton City Commune as 'Historical Shitsburg'.

But everyone knew that the Commune had a thriving black market as well. Because the Colorado Compound was flush with cash – real US currency, not Battery Bucks – and they'd pay well for toothpaste and salt and tampons, none of which they could imagine going without, not even in the little time they had left on earth.

The Reverend believed in order and in god's law, and so if his militia caught anyone outside the Compound with contraband goods, they were immediately confiscated. But they could hardly get everything, and they hardly persuaded anyone to stop making those profitable runs across the border and back.

The Better Living Loss Prevention Department filed these illegal transactions under "acceptable shrinkage". The Security Force had deemed the Commune a "Free Expression Area". No one wanted to deal with a couple thousand gun-toting Jesus freaks. Let them wear themselves out with work, let the heat get to them, or the next Great Fire catch them without the protection of the Better Living Disaster Response Team.

The Company was patient. It could wait. After all, Alameda Street Jail would still be standing for a long time to come.

To Poison, the Commune seemed like their best chance to find a guide. He did not like the idea of consorting with thieves who undercut the Company's profit margin. These, he had always been told, were the most dangerous criminal element of all, because they harmed everyone the Company touched. But with Ghoul's health rapidly declining, he knew there wasn't much time to explore other options.

Besides, it was time to admit the truth to himself. He liked the idea of hurting Better Living. Of hurting his father. He liked the idea of hurting everyone who had ever been complaisant in the Company's deeds. They deserved it. Only Ghoul had ever been innocent.

He let Ray drive. They took the 10 inland, and then headed south on the dusty and ill-maintained State Road 86. The smell of salt, of moisture, was in the air, but as they drove on it was supplanted by the unmistakable smell of rotting meat.

Ray cast an uneasy glance in his direction, but Poison made no indication that he had noticed. He didn't want to talk, didn't want to explain. If Ray didn't trust his intuition, then that was his burden. Poison wasn't about to coddle him.

A faded billboard rose from the side of the road. The word MARINA was painted across the top. Beneath that were the bullet-pointed promises of FOOD, LODGING, ATTRACTIONS, and a picture of a smiling woman in a modest one-piece swimming suit and a bathing cap. A crude, childish penis had been added in red paint, jutting out from the crotch of her suit. Somewhat more recently, her eyes had been filled in with black, and the words "Babylon the Great" scrawled across her face. But even the vandals, it seemed, had gotten bored a long time ago.

"You sure find some interesting places," Ray said.

"Keep following this road," Poison told him. Only then did he take his eyes off the highway.

Ghoul was stretched out across the backseat, his eyes closed, face livid with fever. One of his hands was hooked in the upholstery, his fingers clutching it in rhythmic spasms. Even in sleep, they didn't let up.

Poison didn't watch him for long.

"He okay?" Ray asked. Poison was coming to hate the soft, solicitous, sickroom voice he used whenever he talked about Ghoul.

"He isn't worse."

"Should I stop?"

"No. That won't change anything."

"You could get in back, if you want. I can probably find this place myself…"

"There's nothing I can do," Poison said. Ignoring the heat, ignoring the death-smell, he rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. The tobacco was stale and didn't taste good. Poison knew he had no business noticing something like that now, but he noticed it.

They came over a ridge in the road, and there was water glittering in the valley below. It was no mirage, no trick of the heat; a vast lake lay placid, blue, unruffled by the wind, like a sheet of glass placed on the desert sand.

Ray glanced at him. Poison flicked his cigarette out the window and rolled it up. The smell was intolerable now.

The highway followed the west bank of the sea. Once, it had run right along the shoreline, but the water had retreated considerably since those days. A crumbling lakebed had already swallowed the guardrail in places, and it would soon take the road too. Fifty yards below, the blue water gleamed, cold and malevolent. The color seemed impossible, like a shade that could only be achieved by chemicals. A narrow strip of beach, white as bone, surrounded the water.

The Salton Sea had collected most of the runoff from the Great Fires of 2012. Better Living had never satisfactorily answered the question of what was in the chemical foam it had used to extinguish the flames, but whatever it was had turned the Sea into poisonous slime. The fish had all died. The migrating flocks of birds died too. The smell of death still lingered.

Progress, Poison thought vaguely. Progress.

"There's some kind of hippie colony down here, right?" Ray said. "I heard about something like that…"

Poison looked at him searchingly. He could see that Ray had not spoken out of genuine curiosity, but only because he wanted to talk about something. Poison would have ignored him, but he wanted something to talk about too.

"Wait," Poison said. "We're almost there."

They passed a sign on the roadside, stark black print on white and bearing the Better Living logo. It told them they were entering a restricted area, to have their documents ready. Just beyond the sign was an abandoned security checkpoint. Ray guided the Trans Am around the row of tire studs affixed to the pavement, following the well-worn path through the dust.

The Colorado Compound loomed at once on the right. The wall around it was crowned with barbed wire, a sight comforting in its familiarity. The only structures that were tall enough to be seen beyond the wall were the spires of the massive church, the heads of the windmills, and the guard towers that jutted up at regular intervals.

"We're probably being watched," Poison said. "Don't speed up. Just drive like you know where you're going."

"I thought you did know where we were going."

Poison didn't say anything, didn't even look at him. A black Cadillac sedan came slithering up the road towards them. Ray's foot drifted off the gas pedal, and the Trans Am began to slow. Poison clamped a hand down on his knee, forcing his leg down. The transmission roared in protest, and the car leapt forward. The Cadillac passed them without slowing or signaling.

"What the fuck…?" Ray said.

"Drive," Poison hissed at him. "Just drive. Stop wasting time."

To his surprise, Ray backed down, settling himself once more behind the wheel with his hands at 10 and 2. "Sure. Sorry. I know you're worried…"

That word – worried – made Poison seethe, but he kept his mouth shut.

Presently, they began to see signs of habitation. Empty city streets branched out from the highway. The land there had been divided into lots, but no houses had ever been built. A few crumbling, 50s-style bungalows began to appear. They were decaying, uninhabited. Ray let the Trans Am slow again; he seemed unaware that he was doing it. But it wasn't what he was thinking. These houses had never had anyone living in them.

The Commune itself was located on a broad horseshoe of land that branched off from what had once been a marina. At one end, docks spilled into the dry seabed and the sand around them was studded with grounded boats. All the rest was given over to trailers. A few were double-wide, the rest had only a single cramped room.

No one moved on the street. The only indication that they were not completely alone was the unshakable feeling of being watched from the guard towers of the Compound on the hill.

On a ridge above the Commune there was a trailer that sat apart from the others. It was pastel pink, with the skeleton of a bird painted on the side, its wings spread as if to take flight. A crooked stoop had been erected by the door to give the illusion of a permanent residency.

Poison turned to look in the back seat. Ghoul had not moved, but Poison could see that his jaw was clenched so tightly that the joints stood out like knots. His teeth ground against each other, a soft dry sound.

"There," Poison said, nodding towards the trailer on the ridge. "Go up there."

He affected a confidence he did not wholly feel, knowing only that whoever lived on the ridge sat a little above the others, looking down on them, and so he alone might be able to help them.

When they were near the top of the dirt track that led up the ridge, the screen door of the trailer opened. A man stepped out of the cool and welcoming darkness within. He was wearing flannel pajama pants, a white Henley, and dark sunglasses. A cigarette winked in the corner of his mouth, and a beer bottle glinted in his hand. He leaned his elbows on the porch railing, watching them come towards him.

At the top of the ridge, Poison told Ray to keep the motor running, and he got out. The smell of rot was less up here, but the heat was still unbearable. The man threw back his head and took a swallow of beer. He was long-limbed, long-throated, and his skin was startlingly pale. He must have taken good care to stay out of the sun.

He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked Poison over leisurely. Poison allowed it. Just like when you meet a new dog, he thought. You have to let it get your scent.

"I have an appointment already this afternoon," the man said at last. "But for you, I could rearrange my schedule."

"We are in need of a guide," Poison said. "We want to go South."

"A coydog?" He twisted the cigarette thoughtfully between two fingers. "Why'd you come all the way up here?"

"You seemed like the type of person who would know people."

He laughed, slow in coming and rusty with disuse. "You're right. I guess I do know damn near everyone. But I don't know you. What's your name?"

"Party Poison."

"Is that so," he said. "Then, I guess, I do know you. By reputation at least."

"That's impossible," Poison replied.

"I guess it's a common name." He laughed again. "You can call me Mikey. And, if you like, you can come inside. Your friend too. It's too damn hot to talk out here."

He turned and went back inside. The screendoor slammed behind him. He had not even looked back, as if he were confident that Poison would follow him. And, after a moment's hesitation, Poison did.

With Ray's help, he got Ghoul out of the backseat, up onto the porch and inside. A wave of cool, dry air washed over them; on a ledge by the window, an evaporative cooler rigged with batteries hummed softly.

The trailer was narrow and cluttered with shabby furniture with sagging springs and scuffed legs but clean new upholstery. The walls were pale blue, encrusted with posters, prints, and old photographs. Every spare surface was equally cluttered with scratched vases, tacky little statues. A shelf of the bookcase was devoted to vinyl records, all of which had probably warped long ago from the heat. One corner of a table had been given over to a collection of women's cosmetics, all of which looked as if they hadn't been used in years.

"What the hell is wrong with him?" Mikey said. He was looking at Ghoul as if he were a mess one of his guests had tracked in.

"He's sick," Ray said.

"No shit. Is it contagious?"

"It's fine," Poison said, and then Mikey's expression changed. It didn't become kinder, only more accommodating.

"You can put him in my room, I guess. It'll be more comfortable back there."

The room he had mentioned was a section of the trailer that had been partitioned off by a painted screen. There was a sofa back there, and a frayed curtain of mosquito netting. Carefully, Poison set Ghoul down and drew the curtain around him.

Ghoul opened his eyes. When he saw Poison leaning over him, he forced a smile. "Everything okay?"

"It's fine."

Poison stroked Ghoul's hair back from his face, keeping he gesture hidden behind his body. When he straightened up again, Ray said in a hushed voice, "This guy is kind of weird."

"He'll do what I say," Poison replied. "Don't worry."

When they returned, Mikey was holding three fresh bottles. "You guys want a beer?"

"I want," Poison said. "To discuss the matter of obtaining a guide."

Mikey's expression tightened. "I know that's what you want. I heard you the first time you said it. But it's not as if he's going to die in the next ten minutes. So sit down and drink your fucking beer."

Poison remained on his feet a moment more, and then, with slow contempt, he sat down on one of the sofas. Mikey handed him a bottle, thrusting it vindictively into his hands.

"These are cold…" Ray said.

"I know. A fucking miracle in the desert." Mikey flung himself down in an armchair and took a long drink. He didn't take his eyes off them for even a moment.

"I can help you," he said at last. "If you play your cards right, I can be a lot of help to you."

"You misunderstand," Poison replied. A smile formed on his lips, tender and cruel. "We don't require the services of a prostitute."

Mikey neither flushed nor paled. He didn't even flinch; his face was set, as if carved out of wood. "I guess it's pretty obvious, isn't it?"

"You seem to live comfortably," Poison said, as if that explained it.

"Those boys from Salvation Mountain pay top dollar. They like to keep me happy. They're afraid I'll tell their daddies on them if they don't. Plenty of them come. Lots more than any one of them suspects. They'd still catch hell from the Reverend if word ever got out."

"So you are their confidant?" Poison said. His unkind smile had deepened, settling into familiar lines.

"No," Mikey replied flatly. "I hate them all."

When Poison didn't say anything in response, Mikey looked away. His eyes moved around the cramped trailer, settling on everything in turn. "I hate this place."

He sighed. "It doesn't matter. You don't want to hear about that. I know someone who can take you. He's making a run right now, but he should be back in the morning. I'll talk to him for you."

Again, Poison did not speak right away, and, after he had taken a slow inventory of the room, Mikey looked at him again. "I don't know who you think you are. I ought to throw you out on your ass for talking to me like you did. But I won't do that. In fact, you can stay here tonight."

How strangely this creature was looking at him, Poison thought. As if he had just issued a challenge rather than extended an invitation. Life, for him, must have been just that: one conflict following the next. But Poison was not inclined towards sympathy. They all had their problems.

"What if I decline?" he said at last.

Mikey narrowed his eyes. "Like I give a shit. Go sleep in your fucking car for all I care."

Poison would not have admitted it to anyone, but he liked that answer immensely. He'd gotten so tired of people with no backbone. He took a long drink from the bottle in his hand. It really was cold, so cold that it hurt when he swallowed. He had, he realized, almost forgotten what that felt like.

"We'll stay," he said. "Thank you for your hospitality."

Mikey relaxed when he said that. Until that moment, Poison had not realized how tensely he had been holding himself, with his shoulders hunched up defensively, his elbows tucked in tight against his body, his knees pinched together. Without those precautions in place, he looked like a different man: loose-jointed, almost awkward. Above this, however, his face remained smooth and impassive. Aristocratic, Poison thought, permitting himself an unaccustomed rhetorical flourish.

"Good," Mikey said. His voice was suddenly hoarse, barely a whisper. "I guess you're not completely stupid. You can have another beer, if you want. I'm sure as hell going to. And I'm not taking any callers tonight."

This last, he said defiantly. His hands twisting around the bottle, his eyes fixed on Poison's face.

"I would not presume to moralize," Poison replied.

"So don't." He got to his feet, a jerky nervous gesture, and began pulling the curtains. Locking down the trailer as if in preparation of a siege.

"Poison…" Ray said quietly.

"Don't," Poison replied. "It's all right."

"I know it's all right. But for god's sake, you don't have to terrorize that poor kid."

Poison looked at him sharply, but before he could speak, Ray finished the beer in his hand and stood up. "I'm going to go move the car. Get it out of sight of the main road."

On the way out, he paused long enough to shake Mikey's hand, to thank him. Mikey suffered it with awkward politeness, but he looked as if he would have preferred a slap to the face.

When Ray was gone, Mikey said, "No one's going to steal your shitty car, you know."

"Yes," Poison replied. "I know."

Mikey gave him a withering look. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one. He took one drag, and then ground the cigarette out in an overflowing ashtray.

"Hey," he said. "You want to hear some music?"

Poison glanced toward the painted screen in the corner. "Don't wake him."

"Him?" Mikey said. And then, "Oh, right. Him. No, I'll keep it down."

He didn't, as Poison had expected, head for the shelf of records. Instead, he pulled a guitar case from a repository underneath the table. The case was scuffed and battered, but the guitar inside was pristine. Mikey set it across his lap and dragged his thumb tenderly over the strings. First all of them together, and then one at a time, making tiny, almost imperceptible, corrections to the tuning as he went.

"What's your favorite song?" he asked. His eyes were down, focused on the instrument. There was a disarming simplicity to the question. He was asking it out of genuine interest, which Poison found somehow unsettling.

"I don't have one," Poison said.

Mikey looked up at him, a quick glance from beneath his lashes. "Me neither."

He began to play all at once. The first few chords were nervous, halting; the notes muted by awkward fingerings. Then he seemed to find his balance and the music rang out cleanly. His hands, Poison thought, moved with a savagery even then. The fingers on the neck of the guitar stabbed down on the strings so hard that he knuckles and nails showed white. He began to sing, his voice tuneful, slightly nasal, possessed of a deep melancholy.

_Won't you take me back, North Carolina  
Won't you take me back, Arkansas…_

Poison watched him with polite interest, but he was thinking about Ghoul. He wasn't in any danger of dying, and in fact, under the influence of painkillers, he slept quite soundly. They could spare a night here and then go on in the morning without much risk of any permanent harm coming to him. But still, Poison was thinking about him.

Mikey finished playing, not with a flourish but with a gradual slowing of his picking hand into immobility. He looked at Poison, dark-eyed and inscrutable.

"You seem very talented," Poison said at last.

"I'm not," Mikey said. "I've just had time to practice. Can't just sit around the house getting drunk and sad all the time. Sometimes, you have to do something. Did you like it at least?"

Poison hesitated. "Yes, I liked it."

"You fucking liar." Mikey laughed roughly.

He hadn't been lying, but Poison wasn't interested in making Mikey believe that. He looked away, but he could still feel that hot stare drilling into him. Searching for something, ever searching.

It was then that Ray returned. At the sound of his footsteps on the porch, Mikey gave a start, as if waking from an unpleasant dream, and set the guitar aside. "I'll get you another beer," he said furiously.

They drank the round he brought out, and then the two rounds after that. Outside, the sun had gone down, and Mikey lit candles. In the diffuse light, all edges and angles seemed to soften. Poison's head was humming, but occasionally he would think of Ghoul and it would have effect of immersion in cold water, making him feel abruptly, agonizingly sober.

After the beer ran out, Mikey offered to bring out a bottle of whiskey. Ray wanted to call it a night. He got to his feet, and Poison followed, stumbled, let Ray steady him.

"Stay, if you want," Ray said.

"Ghoul…" Poison heard his own voice, but it seemed to belong to someone else. He did not dare say any more.

"It's okay. I'll go sit with him." He paused. "You don't have to do everything, you know."

And Poison wanted to say that he did, he had to, but Ray was already gone. Slowly, he sat back down. Mikey was busy at the other end of the trailer, mixing drinks. Poison's hand moved, blindly, along the edge of the table. He didn't know what he was looking for, but when he fingers brushed against the handle of a hand mirror, he picked it up.

It had been a long time since Poison had seen his own face reflected in anything but the slash of the rearview mirror. He looked different than he remembered. He had lost weight. There was still a faint bruise under one eye, and his nose was not how it ought to have been. His face was spoiled now, he thought, running the tip of one finger along the bridge, feeling the little divot in the broken cartilage.

It made him ugly. He was both horrified and thrilled by the prospect.

Mikey came back, carrying two highball glasses that clinked with chips of ice. "What happened to you anyway?" he asked.

Poison set the mirror aside. "I got in a fight."

"How's the other guy?"

"Worse."

"Good." Mikey handed over one of the glasses and then he sat down, not in the chair where he had been but on the sofa at Poison's side. He took a long drink. "You know, you have a perfect face."

Poison said nothing. He tightened his grip on the glass in his hand, and moisture beaded around the peripheries of his fingers. Mikey leaned over him, and Poison felt the unsteadiness of his movements, smelled the alcohol on his breath. When they kissed, Poison tasted whiskey and bitters. A strange combination.

Mikey reached for him. Poison caught him by the wrist and held him fast. His arm was thin, the bones light and delicate as a bird's. He wasn't strong, but he was tenacious. They struggled together for almost a full minute before Mikey finally relaxed. He slumped in his seat, his shoulder coming to rest against Poison's.

"Listen," he whispered. "Forget that friend of mine. Let me take you down south. I know the way. I used to go all the time. Just look at all this gaudy shit. It had to come from somewhere, right?"

"Why?" Poison said. He kept his eyes fixed straight ahead, pretending he could not feel the little gasps of air Mikey drew over his jaw with each breath he took.

"Because I want to go with you." His ribcage moved in a silent sigh. "That's all I want. Just take me with you."

Now, Poison felt he had no choice but to look at him. Mikey smiled up at him lazily, but there was an unmistakable throb of desperation in it.

"That's not what you want," Poison said. "You think you do because you're unhappy. Unhappy people attach themselves to me for some reason."

"Maybe it's because they think you know a secret. You can make them happy." He reached for him again, and this time Poison winced but made no attempt to stop him. Mikey stroked his jaw with the tips of his fingers. "No, it's probably not that."

Mikey kissed him again. It suddenly seemed too much effort to stop him. There was no reason to stop him, Poison thought, unless out of some irrational sense of devotion. But he and Ghoul had never made each other any promises, and with Ghoul it had never been simple like this, never straightforward. An exchange of goods, a transaction, a purchase; that was what Poison needed right now.

With careful fingers, Mikey eased down the zipper on Poison's leather jacket. There was no doubt that he was drunk, but he moved now with brisk efficiency, neither hesitating nor stumbling over the task he had set himself to. His hands were inside Poison's clothes, up under his shirt, stroking his ribs, letting him feel the bite of his well-kept nails.

Poison was on his back, unsure how he had gotten there, with a light, hollow-boned presence floating in the shadows above him. Mikey paused to finish off his drink, and then the weight of his body returned. His mouth was against Poison's throat, his breath wet and hot. And it felt good, good. And he didn't care about anything else. He pawed his way up to Mikey's shoulder, and held onto him so tightly that he gasped with pain.

Mikey's hand moved between Poison's legs, stroking him through his jeans. "That's what I want," he purred. "That…"

There were footsteps on the porch outside. Poison was slow to recognize them for what they were, slow to react. A fist pounded heavily on the trailer door.

Mikey moaned. "Just ignore it."

But Poison had already eased him back and sat up. He passed a hand over his disheveled hair, smoothing it back into place. Mikey glared at him. "You motherfucker," he said, though already he was standing up, tugging the hem of his Henley down.

He went to the door, and opened it just a crack. "Leave. I have company tonight."

Poison rose slowly, shedding his leather jacket. He circled around behind Mikey's back until he could see out onto the porch. There were two of them out there – sleek, well-fed sons of the Colorado Compound. Their narrow black ties were loose, and their white dress shirts were undone at the throats, wilted from the sweat of the day.

"Leave," Mikey said again. From where he stood, Poison could see everything: the stiffening of his spine, the tension stamped around his eyes, the furious clench of his fingers on the edge of the door. "You're fucking drunk."

Poison didn't move yet, and he didn't take his eyes off them.

Out on the porch, the sons of the Compound hooted with laughter. "We've got money," one of them said, as if settling the matter. "That means we get you. On your back."

They laughed again, pleased that here they could get away with saying whatever they liked without reprimand. The trailer door rattled, pushed from without. Mikey tightened his grip, pressing the weight of his body against it.

"No," he said. "Go home."

The door rattled again, and Poison could see the clench of Mikey's fingers on the doorframe going slack, the tense lines of his face evaporating into numb acceptance. He stepped back, letting the door swing wide.

Poison reached for his pistol, but he didn't draw. He stepped forward, into the light. The sons of the Compound hesitated in the doorway. Mikey looked at him as if he had forgotten he was there at all.

"You ought to go," Poison said quietly.

There was a long silence. The two sons of the Compound exchanged a look. At last, one of them managed, "Says who?"

Poison tilted his head, indicating the man beside him. "He does." He swayed on his feet, such a small casual movement that it could have been an accident. But it brought his hip, and the gun he wore on it, into clear view.

Another silence passed. This one was not long, but it was heavy. The sons of the Compound retreated down the porch steps. Mikey did not move at all until they were gone, and then he shuddered violently, as if a current of electricity had passed through his body. He slammed the door and threw the latch, and he slumped against the wall of the trailer, pressing his forehead against the aluminum. His chest heaved silently as he caught his breath, and then he was very still, his eyes tightly closed.

"I hate it here," he whispered. "I hate this place."

Poison glanced toward the partition at the back of the trailer. The screen was still pulled across it. He touched Mikey's shoulder, and Mikey flinched from him.

"You should have just let them," he said. "If you hadn't been here, I wouldn't have cared what happened. I don't care about anything anymore…"

Poison touched his shoulder again, turning Mikey to face him. "Tomorrow you will take us south, across the border. And after that, I'll decide what to do with you."

Mikey laughed weakly. "That's all it took to convince you?"

He brushed Poison aside and sank down on a sofa. When he spotted the unfinished glass of whiskey Poison had left on the table, he snatched it up and swallowed it in a single drink.

Poison sat beside him but didn't try to touch him.

"I don't feel good," Mikey said at last.

"You're drunk."

"No, I'm sick." He leaned his head on Poison's shoulder. "I'm fucked up."

Poison slid an arm around his waist. Mikey accepted it but did not relax into his touch. His eyes were closed, and his breath broke in slow waves against the underside of Poison's jaw.

He was asleep.

Poison laid him down on the sofa, arranging his limbs as comfortably as he could. There was nowhere else to sleep, so he stretched out beside him, spreading his jacket over both of them. It was a close fit, but even with his body accommodated so tightly against Mikey's side, Poison felt almost nothing for him.


	12. Chapter 12

**Part II – The Border**

Chapter 1

By the glassless window of an abandoned apartment in Sniper Alley, with the wind blowing from the direction of the ocean and the heat shimmering on the broken pavement, the Manskinner said, "You have to make yourself bereft of everything."

Glad for an excuse to lift his sweat-stung eye from the sighting scope, Frank glanced over at him. The Manskinner knelt, unmoving, leaning into his rifle, the barrel of which rested, equally motionless, on the window frame. He had taken his canvass jacket off in the heat of the day, and his bare arms were twisted with faded tattoos. The Hydra – bottle-green, multi-headed, coiled - dominated the arm that Frank could see. For as long as Frank had known him, the Manskinner had not concerned himself with anything less practical or more extravagant than weapons caches and safehouse addresses, and so the tattoos seemed like scars left behind by a different, older life.

Frank was fascinated by them, but he tried not to let on. He was deeply conscious of looking young and frivolous, though the tattoos were evidence enough that even his incorruptible commanding officer had once been both of those things.

He was quiet for a long time, waiting for the Manskinner to continue, but he seemed to have forgotten that he had spoken in the first place. Frank sighed, and turned back to his scope. The joint at the nape of his neck creaked in protest. His shoulders ached from being so long in the stiff attitude of alertness, and his legs throbbed from kneeling on the uncarpeted floor. But he was afraid to complain, afraid to shift positions. Afraid, even, to feel frustrated. The Manskinner had not moved at all over the course of the last few hours, and he had spoken only in clipped critical half-sentences when Frank did not perform his duties as spotter to his expectations.

"Everything," the Manskinner said. And then, grudgingly, "Even the revolution."

This time, Frank didn't look at him. He kept focused on the empty, sweltering street below. But he was listening.

"You know why you are here," the Manskinner said. "And I know why I'm here. But it's all just platitudes when the time comes to kill someone. And you will kill plenty, Frank. You'll kill them for me, but not because of me. I only point the way. You are the one who has to point the gun. Understand?"

"Yes, sir."

The Manskinner's lips stirred into a grim and ironic smile. "I never asked you how old you were,. I doubt you'd tell me the truth if I did. You're not eighteen – I can see that – but you're old enough. With what you've seen, you're plenty old."

But the Manskinner had never asked that either, what he had seen. Frank doubted he even knew that he had not. He had simply made of him a mathematical formula: one young man, with the addition of hunger and fear, with the subtraction of home and family, equaled one cog in the great machine that produced social upheaval. A machine so complex that the Manskinner alone considered himself skilled to operate it.

Frank did not have an opportunity to say more. It was then that he detected movement at the far end of the Alley. He brought the sighting scope into focus with small recalibrations. It came to him easily; he had been trained briskly, competently, and under the terrifying shadow of the impermissibility of failure.

"Six man patrol," he said. "Fifteen hundred meters."

The Manskinner's hand twitched on the trigger guard of his rifle. "Good. Do the rest."

"Wind is coming from due west at 7 knots. Air visibility at 65 percent. The external temperature is 98 degrees, so you should expect to have to correct for heat distortion."

He glanced up. The Manskinner had pivoted his rifle on the windowsill, so silently that Frank had not even been aware of the movement. They were both watching them now, the half dozen men on the deserted street below them. There was little to offer cover on Sniper Alley, and so they hugged the building fronts. Only three of them had their rifles unslung, and they all had their faces covered, so that it was impossible to tell whether their expressions were ones of fear, or contempt, or bored indifference. That made it a little easier.

At the throat of one stained white uniform, Frank spotted a triangle of glossy black.

"They're wearing body armor," he said. "So aim high."

"Yes," the Manskinner said. He slid his thumb over the safety, a small catch above the trigger, flicking it off. "Now tell me which one."

"What…?"

"Which one is our target?"

Here, Frank hesitated. He had not expected the question, and the longer he thought on it, the more he grasped the full horror of what the Manskinner was asking him. "I don't see a commanding officer. None of them are wearing insignia."

"That's right," the Manskinner said. His finger quivered, eager, on the trigger. When Frank did not reply right away, he hissed. "Now. Decide."

"The lead man," Frank gasped, his voice squeaking out around the knot in his throat. He felt a cold weightlessness balloon in his stomach. "He's closing. He's at 900 meters."

"I see him," the Manskinner said. And then, reluctantly, he added, "You can look away now if you want."

Frank could no longer say what he wanted, but when he tried to turn away he could not. He was transfixed; his burning eye pressed to the sweat-slick view of the scope. Do it, he thought, with such viciousness that at first he worried that he had spoken aloud. What point is there in living in a place like this, if you can't kill a man like that?

The Manskinner pulled the trigger. A deafening roar filled the enclosed apartment. At first, Frank thought that the round had missed completely; it was a full five seconds before the bullet reached its target. It pierced through his throat, just left of the Adam's apple, and Frank saw his head tilt, illusory and impossible, to one side. His ear touched his shoulder, and then slid off, the skin of his neck spilling in a horizontal line, tearing like damp tissue, as his head fell sideways against his breast.

His helmet tumbled off then, and a gout of blood leapt from his mouth, followed by one from his throat. He took two more jerking steps, and then he fell.

Frank could not see his face; he told himself that there had been no chance at all to see it before the blood had obscured it.

The Manskinner stood and unscrewed the sight and the barrel from his rifle and put them in his pocket. He collected his jacket, and slung the rifle over his shoulder and said, "Quickly now. Let's go."

And then, Ghoul opened his eyes. The Manskinner dispersed, and Poison's voice, soft and uninflected out of the low light, came to fill the space he had left.

"…the Battle of Pea Ridge, the Battle of Hampton Roads, the Battle of New Bern, the First Battle of Kernstown…"

"Poison?" Ghoul said. But his voice did not carry, and Poison went on. Monotonous, but somehow not droning; somehow sweet and pleasant to hear.

"…the Battle of Glorieta Pass, the Battle of Shiloh, the Battle of Williamsburg – no, wait – the Siege of Corinth, the Battle of Williamsburg, the Battle of McDowell, the First Battle of Whinchester, the Battle of Hanover Court House, the Battle… the Battle of Cross Keys…"

"Poison," Ghoul said again, and this time Poison quieted. There was a long silence, a long hesitation, before he came around the side of the cot where Ghoul lay. He brushed away the mosquito netting that hung around the bed, and then he stood there, looking down, holding the curtain awkwardly to one side.

"You look tired."

"I feel all right," Poison said.

"Yeah, me too. I feel much better."

"I'm relieved."

"Do you want to sit down or anything?" Ghoul asked.

"Oh." Poison glanced back, as if he suspected someone was watching, and then he said, "Yes, I do."

He sat on the edge of the bed, letting the mosquito net fall back to enshroud them. Ghoul was more amused then annoyed when Poison made no move to touch him, and he reached out and snatched Poison's pale, ungloved hand out of his lap. His fingers were stiff and numb, and there was no strength in his grip at all.

"What happened?" he said, but he wasn't sure he was ready for the answer to that, and so he quickly corrected, "Where are we?"

"A clinic," Poison said. "I wanted better, but we couldn't afford it. I'm sorry."

"I can smell the ocean."

"Five minutes from the beach."

"Then it can't be that bad, can it?"

Poison gave him a startled look, which Ghoul did not know how to interpret. "At least they let you in to see me," he sighed.

"I said I was your brother."

"Did anyone actually believe that?"

"Why shouldn't they?"

Ghoul laughed. It made his ribs hurt, and he quieted quickly. "Poison… you're always doing shit for me. I'm sorry."

"It's all right."

"Is it?"

"If I didn't want to do things for you, then I would stop," Poison said. "Though you would likely be dead by now if I hadn't been looking after you a little."

Ghoul paled, and he felt his skin chill under a sheen of cold sweat. He let Poison's hand slip from his grip, so that he would not feel it too. Poison's expression tightened. "Is something wrong?"

"No," Ghoul whispered. "I just had a dream. Just a second ago."

"A bad one?"

"Yeah." Ghoul hesitated, and then shook his head. "No. But, do you know how sometimes you can dream about the most familiar, comforting things, but in the dream they seem awful and wrong? This was like the opposite of that."

Poison reached for him again. Though Ghoul did not take hand, he allowed Poison to set it over his own. "I had something I needed to tell you," Poison said.

"While I was asleep, right?"

"No. Now, if you'll listen."

Ghoul still felt hazy, translucent, as if he had not yet gotten around to waking up fully. As if only a sliver of him were here with Poison while the rest still crouched on the floor of the sweltering apartment beside the Manskinner, slaughtering endless waves of nameless men, for unnamable reasons. He looked up at Poison's profile; his flattened nose, demurely downcast eyes, tatters of red hair. They acted as an axis, a center around which he could revolve.

"Actually, I had something I wanted to tell you, too," he said.

"Oh?" Tired, pretty, composed, and frayed, Poison looked at him. There was still a chance that he could have shed his leather jacket and gaudy hair color, exchanged them for a suit and tie, and the metamorphosis, the return to his old form, would have been convincing. But that part of him was quickly fading, worn away by sand and wind and no water. It was as if he really were becoming a new person, as if that which was Gerard really was being subsumed by that which was Party Poison.

"You go first," Ghoul said.

"It's about when we first met," Poison said. "I've been thinking about it some. A lot. About what madness gripped me at that moment, and made me want so badly to do those things with you. I had never wanted like that before, to the exclusion of all else, though I had chances in the past, with all manner of people."

He looked again at Ghoul's eyes, as if to make sure he was following along. "What I need you to know," he said, "is that it was not you. It was what you stood for. My first and only real chance to leave that place. That was what I longed for, so much that it hurt."

Ghoul said nothing at first, he only lay very still, his body humming and alert. Entirely awake at last, and unable to return to the dream, to even recall it in full here in the harsh light of day. He felt his throat tighten, his eyes burn with unshedable tears. It no longer took any effort at all to not cry in front of Poison.

"What did you want to tell me?" Poison said.

"It's weird," Ghoul gasped. "I was pretty much going to say the same thing as you."

He watched Poison's eyes, willing him to believe and daring him to disbelieve at the same time. Though it was not the truth, it might as well have been. Ghoul himself was not so sure of his own motivations; he knew only the indelible effect the action had left upon him. But he lacked Poison's ability to dive back through the slippery mutable streams of time, to observe himself dispassionately, coldly, from without. The truth might as well have been that he loved his independence, loved freedom, for those were the only things he could say with any certainty that he had.

"Well, then…" Poison said.

"Yeah, well."

"Are you tired," Poison said. "You sound strange. Does anything hurt?"

"No," Ghoul replied. "I think I'm pretty well awake now. I think I'd like to shut my eyes and rest for a while, though."

"Yes, of course." Poison stood up, passing into the shadows that hovered around the low ceiling. "Is there anything you need? Want?"

"No," Ghoul whispered. "Nothing."

"A book? Something to read. No, I guess you wouldn't…"

There was a low note of pity in his voice that made Ghoul flinch. Poison had known almost from the first that he was unlettered, but he had never seemed to mind. It had never seemed to influence his opinion at all.

"A radio," Ghoul said quickly, just so Poison would not imagine him laying here alone, unmoving, unthinking, unfeeling. Experiencing nothing save that which was immediately before him.

"Yes, I can bring you that."

Poison lingered a moment more, and then he let the mosquito netting fall back into place. He was nothing but a shadow when he turned to go.


	13. Chapter 13

Chapter 2

Poison walked back along the boardwalk. In the fading twilight, the ocean looked gray, still, distant, and indistinct. It was not beautiful, but beauty was not what Poison wanted. He wanted peace.

Almost by accident, almost without meaning to at all, he had kept the promise he had made to Ghoul. They were free now, far beyond the reach of Korse, of the Manskinner, of the Company, of all the baggage of their former lives. It should have been enough – for Ghoul, it undoubtedly was – but Poison could not make himself be content.

He was still his father's son. No matter how far or how long he ran, he could not change that, but he longed to prove, even if to no one but himself, that he could be more than his duplicate and his heir, that his life could be justified by more than just his father's vanity and Better Living's greed.

From time to time he thought, he could still leave. Take the Trans Am and go, with no apologies or explanations to anyone. There were days when he wanted to, for no other reason than to prove that he was able. He would think of the new tires they had put on, of the gas gauge hovering at half-full, and he would be seized by a powerful, fearful restlessness.

And then the moment would pass.

Poison left the boardwalk behind. A row of vacation homes formed a sporadic line along the waterfront. They were small cottages, of no more than one or two rooms, left here to rot in the elements ever since the troubles had started. The wooden decks were warped and whitened with salt, and the tile floors were caked with the slime and sediment of countless floods, but they were sound enough for the refugees and squatters who drifted down from the Zones.

Now, as the last sun vanished from the sky, Poison walked along the path behind the houses. There were lights on in most of the windows, and voices came from within, alternating Spanish and English. He went silently, seeking out the shadows, unnoticed, to the last cottage on the row. It was the closest to the water, and, the neighbors had told them when they first arrived, the tides had changed since it had been built. Twice a week, without fail, the ocean ran over the front deck and flooded the house in ankle deep water. Once in a while, one of the mutants would wash in with it, an eyeless fish or a crab with an extra leg jutting out at a pitiful angle, but most of the sea life Poison had seen was whole and healthy. It always reminded him that he had arrived at last on a strange and unknown shore.

When he came up to the door, he could hear someone within, speaking low and rapid. Ray and Mikey were home, and by this time of night they were usually drunk. Poison thought often of making a clean break with them, to be alone at last. But Ray was so handy with the car, and Mikey spoke a useful, passable, demotic Spanish, and so Poison had not been able to get rid of them yet, though he longed to be alone. Alone, with Ghoul.

Inside, the radio was playing. Dr. Death, his voice limp with static and distance, was giving the evening broadcast. Saying, "…O swallow swallow, the prince of Aquitaine of the ruined tower. The Dagnys are tying up traffic at the border crossing tonight. You coydogs making the run tonight can expect delays of several hours, and scattered shootouts in the washes…"

Poison reached over and changed the station.

Ray was seated in their only chair, with the back of it propped against the wall to keep the broken leg from wobbling. Mikey was crouched at his feet, both his legs folded under himself and a bottle of tequila with two golden inches left below the label wrapped in his hands. When the radio went silent, they looked up without curiosity.

"Did you go to see him?" Mikey asked at last.

Annoyed, Poison turned away.

"I'm just being polite," Mikey said, and when Poison still did not respond, he climbed laboriously to his feet and thrust the bottle of tequila towards him. "Have a drink."

Without looking at him, Poison grabbed the bottle out of Mikey's hand and took a long drink. Mikey watched him for a moment, and then he glanced back at Ray, giving Poison a glimpse of his elegant profile, sending his pulse surging unexpectedly into his throat.

"Do you want to tell him?" Mikey said. "Or should I?"

Ray lifted a hand to him, a vague wave that might have suggested anything.

Mikey sighed. "It was weird, the way it happened. It just came to us, with no warning at all. Like it came out of nowhere. But we looked at each other, and we knew. And more than that, we both knew that we knew."

"What are you talking about?" Poison said.

"My name's Kobra Kid now. That's with two K's."

Poison watched him for a long time in silence. Kobra still had not looked directly at him, and his delicate profile was gradually becoming harder, more brittle, as if he were slowly being transformed into glass. Poison glanced past him, to where Ray still sat, watching them. "And you?"

"Jet Star," he said.

"How many K's are in that?" He saw Jet open his mouth to protest, and he shook his head once, sharply. "I'll call you whatever you want. I don't care of your explanations, or justifications."

"Who gives a shit anyway?" Mikey – now Kobra - said. "It's just a stupid name." He glanced at Poison, a hard movement of his hard eyes within his hard-angled face. "I'm going to have a smoke? Do you want one?"

Poison did, and very badly. But before he could answer, Jet said, "You two know the rules. No cigarettes in the house."

"I know, I know," Kobra said. He thrust the bottle of tequila into Jet's hands, and then he turned and went out.

Poison hesitated before following him.

"You know, you don't have to…" Jet started to say, but Poison didn't wait to hear the rest.

Kobra was waiting for him outside. He got his cigarettes out of his jacket and lit one for each of them. "I know what you want to ask me," he said.

Poison breathed out smoke. "Is that right?"

"You want to know about the names," Kobra said. He turned away, looking out towards the ocean. It was too dark to see the water, but the crashing of the surf was very loud. "You want to know where they came from."

"No," Poison said. "I wasn't going to ask you that."

"Probably the same place Party Poison did. I know you didn't make that up. I've been fucking you long enough to know how uncreative you actually are."

"You're drunk," Poison said quietly.

"That doesn't have anything to do with it. I've been drunk plenty of times before."

"Yes, I know."

The cigarette in Kobra's hand had burned down, unsmoked, to the filter. Cursing, he stabbed it out and flicked it away. He shook another one out of the pack, but when he tried to light it, his fingers stumbled over the task. Poison reached out and took the book of matches from him and struck one. Kobra cupped one hand around the flame, shielding it. Now, Poison had no choice but to look Kobra in the face as he lit his cigarette for him.

Kobra breathed in, and then he turned away to look out over the dark beach towards the invisible water. "I know I'm just charity to you," he said, softly now. "I know the only reason I'm here is because you had a whim. But I just wanted to tell you, I'm grateful. I feel better. I feel so much better now. It's like I can finally think, for the first time in… I don't know. It's been too long."

Poison watched the lines of his profile shift, becoming indistinct, as if a haze were settling over his expression.

"When I was up there in Salton, I always had people around." Kobra's voice had become quiet, a little slurred, as if consumed by the same hazyness that had shadowed his face. "I'd fix them drinks, play a little guitar. But they were no friends to me. The first time I saw you, I thought you were different. You might be my friend."

Poison looked away, irritated and dismayed. He did not know Kobra well, but he had seen from the first that he was neither self-pitying not sentimental, and so he could not understand why Kobra had chosen now of all times to descend into both.

He wanted no part of it. But it was too late now, Poison thought bitterly. Too late to go back to that place of solitude that his father's money had made for him, like a silver cell suspended high above the hard, un-proud struggles of the poor. And he understood then, for the first time, that in spite of all he had endured for the profit of the Company, he did not have a monopoly on the world's suffering. Moreover, not everyone was like Ghoul: content to endure indefinitely in beautiful silence.

Something inside of him was touched, and Poison felt a wave of furious distaste, for the fact that he had come to understand now, like this.

Just then, Kobra looked over at him, and saw the emotion that flashed across Poison's face. And he misunderstood, as he had been bound to. Before Poison's eyes, his expression hardened again, taking up all the slack he had let out, so that his face was once again an elegant, immobile mask. He threw his cigarette away, and it arched like a tracer through the night; then he came forward to wrap his arms around Poison's neck.

"_Veneno_," he whispered. "_Veneno_, _mi cielo_..."

Poison caught him by the wrists and held him off, but he had stopped him almost too late. Kobra's face was near his own and he could feel his hot breath on his cheek, smell the tequila. His attention was drawn gradually, helplessly, to the shift of Kobra's body beneath his clothes as he tried to squirm closer.

Half a minute passed, and Poison felt his resolve weakening, just as it always did when Kobra had made up his mind. Kobra knew that he was good at what he did, and Poison knew that he knew, and somehow that made it all the more devastating. But the truth remained, beyond all evasion and embellishment: Kobra was the best he'd ever had.

Better, by far, than Ghoul had ever been.

Kobra must have seen the truth in his eyes, because he began to draw away. He was too slow, however, and Poison thrust him back, hard enough that Kobra stumbled a step and his hip struck the railing. He straightened himself out with a toss of his head; his upper lip jerked back, bearing his teeth.

"I don't even know what it's like to be a virgin," he said in a fierce, hot whisper. "I was born fucked. But I don't blame you, _veneno_. For all those promises you made me and never kept. How could I?"

"I never promised you anything," Poison said, appalled that he seemed unable to make his voice anything more than a smothered rasp.

"You did, though. You did it without even knowing what you were doing. My mom used to tell me, don't let your mouth go around writing checks that your ass can't cash. That's good advice, but not for you. You're just the opposite of that. Your ass is writing bad checks all over town."

Poison looked away. "You're drunk."

"So what?" Kobra snapped. With a defiant flourish he reached into his jacket and brought out his cigarettes. But when he opened the pack and found it empty, all the strength went out of him in a sharp gust, as if he had been struck. Cursing, he threw the pack away and planted both hands on the railing and looked out into the night with unseeing eyes.

"It's dark tonight," he said, and then he jumped as if the sound of his own voice had startled him. "Let's go for a walk, Poison. Up to the car, or down between the empty cabins. It's dark. Look, there's no moon at all."

Poison opened his mouth to reply, and was surprised to find himself depleted of all resistance. He looked down the beach, and then back at their front door, as if he were thoroughly considering all options. Then he said, "Yes. All right."

They went without speaking. In the shadow of the wall of one of the uninhabited cabins, Kobra stopped abruptly. He turned, his eyes already closed as he leaned in for a kiss. Poison put his head back to meet it, but even when Kobra surged forward, pressing their bodies together, he felt none of the restless urgency for him that he had a moment ago.

Kobra sighed, and without opening his eyes he drew the back of his hand along Poison's cheek. He shrugged out of his jacket and let it fall to the sand, and then his legs seemed to unhinge beneath him and he sank to his knees.

He hooked his fingers in Poion's belt, but he didn't unbuckle it. At the last moment, he seemed to reconsider, and his hand dipped lower, curving around the bulge in the front of Poison's jeans.

Poison could feel the raw heat of his hand through the worn denim. The ridge of his palm, and the five small crescents of his fingertips; he could discern each clearly, as if they were separate, distinct brands pressed against his skin, though surely that must have been his imagination.

He caught his breath in a fitful gasp, and his hand fell on Kobra's hair. He twisted it, tangling his fingers in the strands. Kobra did not wince, and so Poison pulled back, guiding him to his feet.

Kobra stood slowly. His eyes open now, hooded behind his lashes. Poison was unsettled by the look on his face, and he forced it away with a flick of his wrist. Kobra bent easily, exposing the long column of his throat. Poison descended on it, kissing the juncture of his neck and shoulder, and he felt Kobra's pulse throb beneath his lips.

At the slightest pressure, Kobra sank back, until he was stretched out on the sand and Poison was kneeling over him, straddling his hips. He felt Kobra's hands moving down his chest, tugging at the zipper of his jacket, slipping under the collar to fan out against his shoulders.

Poison suddenly loathed him, and loathed the physical closeness. He grabbed Kobra's wrists and twisted his arms back, pinning them above his head. Kobra gave a start, as if he had been awakened. His eyes widened, and Poison thought that he was seeing him there, above him, for the first time.

"Let go," he said, tugging at his trapped wrists. "What are you doing?"

Poison said nothing. He brought Kobra's wrists together so hard they made an audible crack when they met, and then he wrapped one hand around both of them. If Kobra had struggled then, he could have broken free, but he didn't struggle. He just laid there, looking up at Poison with a curtain of black slowly falling over his eyes.

"I disgust you," he said. "Tell me I do. I want you to say it."

"It's not you," Poison replied. He was not prepared to explain or excuse himself any further; Kobra could either accept it as true, or he could lay there and suffer.

"You owe me that much…" Kobra said, but then his voice dissolved into a soft hiss as Poison unbuckled his belt and tugged down the zipped of his jeans, allowing his erection to spring free.

Too late, Poison realized, he had forgotten to remove his gloves. But the moment for that was passed now, and he doubted Kobra would even notice. He wrapped his hand around the shaft of Kobra's rigid cock, stroking him slowly, viciously, until Kobra twisted and gasped beneath him. Then he reached for his own jeans, letting them down over his hips, but no further than that.

Kobra's gaze rolled slowly down Poison's body and settled on his crotch, and Kobra ran his tongue over his dry lips. "Fuck me," he murmured.

"No."

"Goddamn you. If you hate me so much… If you hate everyone so fucking much…"

"Shh," Poison said. He knew it had not come off comforting so much as patronizing, but that was something he could not help or change.

He arched his hips forward, pressing their bodies together, and then he took both their cocks in one hand, stroking them in tandem. He felt the wild pulse of Kobra's heart moving up and through his own body. The leather-gloved hand was, for a moment, like the hand of stranger.

Kobra was gasping for air. Then he caught his breath with a kind of frantic sob, and he came. Poison felt it splash hotly against his stomach, trickling down into the flaps of his undone jeans.

Another stain, and this one hard to remove. It was with this practical, unromantic thought that Poison too, found his release.

For almost a full minute they did not move. Poison's head was down, his hair liked two red banners on either side of his face. His eyes were closed so he did not know what Kobra looked like, and he could not have guessed at all.

"Move," Kobra said at last, quietly. "It's too fucking hot for you to sit on me all night."

Poison rolled off him, hitching his jeans back over his ass, running fingers through his hair, straightening out his twisted clothing. Kobra raised himself on his hands and watched all these small rituals, and then he stumbled to his feet, dragging his jacket off the sand and slinging it over his shoulders.

"Thanks, I guess."

Poison glanced up at him, startled.

"Or is that not what I should be saying right now?"

"No, you don't have to."

Kobra looked at him for a moment longer, in a kind of baffled, defeated silence. He reached into his jacket pocket for his cigarettes but they were not there. At last he turned and started back up the beach. His pale hair stood out starkly for a moment, but it was quickly swallowed by the night.


	14. Chapter 14

Chapter 3

The next day, Poison brought the radio by. He carried it wrapped up in his coat, as if it were contraband, and only after they were alone did he bring it out and set it on the little shelf beside the bed.

Ghoul managed a smile as he sat up in bed to meet him. "Thanks." His voice was a pitiful rasp; it was too much to hope for that Poison would not take notice.

"Are you all right?" There was a kind of hitch in the words; a slight hesitation after the first two, followed by a rushed exhalation of the last. Ghoul could tell that Poison was not accustomed to saying them, that he was even startled by the feelings implicit behind such simple and unimaginative concern.

But rather than being frustrated, Ghoul found it inexplicably charming. "I'm okay," he whispered. "I just really need to get out of here."

"Why?"

"I'm bored, mostly." Ghoul laughed dryly, like an expulsion of dust from his lungs. "What's wrong? Didn't you miss me?"

Poison did not move at all, but for an instant he seemed to waver before Ghoul's eyes, as if he had become two images of himself, the one that stooped to sit on the edge of Ghoul's bed, and the one that remained behind, aloof and disimpassioned. Then the back of his hand slid, brief and cool, over Ghoul's cheek, and the two images resolved.

"I missed you," he said quietly.

"I know," Ghoul replied. "No matter how many times you try to tell me otherwise, I know."

"Do I tell you otherwise?"

"Yesterday. You said…"

Poison frowned, as if trying to remember, as if it had happened months ago rather than hours. "Oh, right. That. Maybe I didn't mean it quite the way I said it."

Ghoul looked at him for a long time, trying to guess what he might be thinking, but Poison's eyes had taken on the dark cast that they always did when he was holding something back, that look that concealed nothing and everything all at once.

"You should be more careful then," Ghoul said at last.

"I know," Poison whispered.

"If Ray were here, he'd yell at you."

"Ray?" For a moment, Poison honestly didn't seem to recognize the name. Then the dark shadow fell again over his eyes and he said, "Oh, of course. Ray."

"You know, our friend Ray. Kind of acts like he's our dad sometimes. Our dad-friend."

"Yes, I said I remember."

"Did you finally kick him out or something?" Ghoul was joking, but there was a part of him that suspected Poison had done exactly that. He wouldn't exactly be pleased to find out that Poison had made a decision like that on his own, without consulting him first. But to be alone at last, alone with Poison and with no one to answer or justify himself to…

"No," Poison said. "I didn't do that. He's waiting. But his name is Jet Star now."

"Jet what?"

"Star."

"I don't get it," Ghoul said. "Why?"

"Because that's what he has decided it should be."

"He said he didn't like the name thing. He said he didn't get it."

"Yes," Poison said. "I remember."

"So he changed his mind. Or something else. Something else happened, didn't it?"

He felt Poison drawing away from him, back into himself, before he even moved at all. He stood up abruptly, and turned his back to the bed, wiping his palms on his jeans as if he had recently been working hard in the dirt. Ghoul wished that he hadn't said anything, hadn't let on that he was disturbed. Names were just names, after all. Just collections of sounds, with no inherent meaning aside from the one they all, as if it random, agreed upon. Any change should have been merely cosmetic, semantic; and it shouldn't have mattered to Poison, or to Ray, or Jet Star, or to him.

"I suppose we'll have some things to get used to when you get back," Poison said. He was still looking away, but he seemed not to see anything out that direction at all.

"Like what?" Ghoul said. And then, when Poison did not respond he said, "Are you not answering because you can't say, or because you don't want to?" And then, "You must resent coming here a lot, Poison. I don't know what to say to you…"

"I don't resent coming here."

"Then do you resent me?"

"Don't be melodramatic."

"I don't mean to be," Ghoul said. "Look, it embarrasses me when I have to ask you stuff like that. But it's not like you make it easy to talk to you. That's the only thing that gets any reaction from you at all. What am I supposed to do?"

"Can't you just trust me? Just let me take care of things."

"Yes," Ghoul said. "I can. But I don't want that to be all there is. Poison, I don't want that to be all there is of us."

Poison glanced back at him. The all-concealing, all-revealing dark shroud had again fallen over his eyes, but it kept sliding back and then returning. Veiling and unveiling, giving Ghoul brief glimpses of the raw nakedness beneath.

"We don't really know each other that well at all, do we?" Ghoul murmured.

"I don't know who you were," Poison corrected. "But I know who you are. And I will know who you will be. But I don't know why you can't let that be enough for you."

"No. It's enough." Ghoul regretted having said anything. Poison did not understand him, and he never would, and he seemed to have not even the slightest interest in trying. The truth was, Ghoul did not fully understand himself what it was he wanted Poison to figure out. A part of him had hoped that they might stumble on it together, a complete accident, but every word he said to try to guide them towards it and every moment they spent together only seemed to drive them further from the truth, further from each other. Deeper into the strained, artificially-constructed un-reality they now shared.

He had wanted to tell Poison the one thing that he was certain of: That, beyond all logic and reason, he had fallen in love with him. But he knew that he couldn't. The moment for that had passed a long time ago.

"You'll be out of here soon," Poison said. "The doctor told me she only wants to keep you for a few more days. She said the fever still comes back in the evenings…"

"I tried not to let them know about that." Ghoul laughed weakly. "But they found out anyway."

"You're out of danger," Poison said briskly. He talked more freely now that the conversation had passed into the cold, hard facts of medical science. "Though upon your release you'll be very weak. It will take time to rebuild the muscle mass you lost while you were in the coma. But the money we have ought to hold out a little longer."

"The money…" Ghoul echoed. "You know, you never told me where the money came from."

"It's easier to show you," Poison said. "When you're out."

"Right, of course. You know, if I didn't know better I'd say you were deliberately keeping something from me."

"I am."

Ghoul laughed again, this time with genuine humor. "I hate to tell you this, but you're not doing a great job of it."

"I'm sorry." Poison lowered his eyes. A hint of color flooded his cheeks, and then faded so quickly that it seemed like nothing more than a mirage.

"At least come here and give me a kiss before you leave," Ghoul said. He knew that Poison wouldn't object, but he still felt bold demanding it from him, as if they had never touched each other before.

Poison bent over him, a gallant sweeping gesture, like, Ghoul imagined, a prince or an old movie star. Ghoul felt all his muscles winding up tight, straining into the kiss. His fingers curled as Poison pulled away.

"Still pretty good at that," Ghoul said.

Poison's lips did not move, but a smile seemed to form in the dark depths of his eyes. "I'm good at a lot of things. I'll remind you some day."

"Soon, I hope."

"Yes, soon," Poison said. "I'll see you tomorrow."

Then he was gone, and Ghoul was alone. He knew that he had been angry with Poison earlier, even remembering the vague outline of the shape the emotion had made inside of him, but he could no longer explain exactly why. There was a lack now that Poison had left, but it was not the huge and uncertain loneliness that had engulfed him before he had come. He didn't like to think that the only choices left to him now were Poison, or that loneliness. That he could find no middle ground in between them where he – as Frank or as Fun Ghoul – might exist undisturbed.

No, he wouldn't think about it, not now. He wouldn't allow himself to worry. It was unfair to both of them to define what they had together in terms of what they did not, to determine the mass of what they shared only by what it displaced.

Ghoul took the radio from the shelf next to the bed and switched it on. He spun the dial, past an opera, and a melancholy _corrido_. Past a great gulf of static, on the other side of which was a border preacher talking salvation. And just beyond that, almost at the end of the dial, he tuned in the familiar cadences of Dr. Death's voice, coming to him from across a great distance.

"…you could just ravel out into time. That would be nice. It would be nice if you could just ravel out into time…"

And Ghoul's thoughts turned abruptly, violently, to the last time he had been in a hospital, and how it had not been a clean, well-maintained clinic like this one, but rather the dusty and windowless basement of a dead department store. Before the old business had moved out, they had tossed a bunch of junk into the corners, where now piles of broken shelving and broken TVs and broken mannequins twisted and crouched.

It was no place to be hurt, no place to be sick in, and Frank was relieved that he was not. There had been twenty of the Manskinner's soldiers in the convoy that had driven out early that morning to intercept the prison transport headed for Alameda Street Jail. There were sixteen of them now – soon to be fifteen, or maybe fifteen already, for the sounds from that makeshift pallet in that corner of the basement, the sounds Frank had been trying so hard not to hear, had by now dried up entirely. Frank alone had escaped the ambush uninjured. He did not think of it as a miracle, or as a reward for a fight well fought, or even as stroke of dumb luck. All he thought was that he was glad he was on his feet, distributing morphine where he could, and out from under the dull, imprecise knives of the PUF medics.

He found the Manskinner against the far wall, looking as if he had nothing better to do than wait for something to happen. His left arm was in a sling, and there was a gash with seven stark black sutures that ran from the corner of his mouth down towards his chin.

"You okay?" Frank said.

"Fine," the Manskinner replied.

"Are you sure? I saw you go down. I saw—" Frank stopped taking, but the Manskinner watched him with dark, patient eyes, waiting for him to continue. "I saw a lot of blood," he whispered at last.

"I'm sure it wasn't mine," the Manskinner said. "If that's what you're implying."

"Maybe…"

"That's nice of you to say, but I doubt you actually give a shit what happens to me, Frank." The Manskinner sighed. "Don't cringe like that. Whatever you think your secrets are, you can keep them. I don't care about your tiny passions, or your minor vengeances, as long as you do your job when the time comes."

"I do," Frank said. "I always do. I did today, didn't I?"

The look the Manskinner gave him then reminded Frank of the way he sized someone up at a glance before a fight. But rather then be intimidated by it, Frank felt a kind of serene reassurance, as if the Manskinner were at last accepting him as, if not an equal, than at least a grown man.

"You did fine," the Manskinner said. "And you were very lucky. And that's all. Four of my people died, and you aren't better than them because you lived. Frank, sometimes I think that this – all of this - Better Living and all of their promises and the people who want so desperately to believe them, are just a reaction against war. War, and the way it refuses to be beautiful like we had all heard it would be."

"I don't know…" Frank whispered. And he didn't care. And, more than anything, he resented the Manskinner for bringing it up now, when he had just begun to forget all the terrible frozen tableaus of battle. The moments that his memory extracted, frozen, and pasted upon the screen of his mind. Each upon the next until all he had left was a collage of blood and smoke and limbs and eyes forever wide in horror. In his mind, he did not see himself above it, looking down, or even outside, looking in. He was within it, and it all radiated out from him, as if he were the axis around which all the carnage revolved, or the epicenter from which it had all spewed.

He glared at the Manskinner savagely, as if he hated him. "If you don't need anything, then I'm going to go," he bit out.

"No, I don't need anything."

Frank really had intended to leave then, but he was surprised to find himself rooted to the spot. Still more surprised when he heard his own voice say, "Aren't you hurt? Doesn't it hurt at all?"

"It doesn't hurt," the Manskinner sighed. "Nothing much hurts anymore. The part of the brain that knows what pain is, it's actually very small. All it took was a sympathetic doctor with a needle charged with electricity to burn it out forever."

"I never knew that about you…" Frank said. The Manskinner almost never talked about himself, but to have him start now, on a subject like this, was somehow vulgar and revolting.

"It was during the Occupy Riots, when every day we were on the steps of the Capitol Building, under their batons, or soaking up the rubber bullets from their riot guns, or getting showered with pepper spray. Back then, it wasn't like it is now. Events were not decided in sporadic bursts of swift and sure action. It was just the same thing, over and over again, day after day, like dragging yourself to a job that you hate, but that you know that you must do or else starve…"

"Still," Frank said. "Still, it couldn't really have been that easy."

"No, it wasn't easy. And it wasn't perfect. I still feel the old scars, the old breaks, the ones from before I had the procedure done. It's purely psychological. No more real than dreaming."

He took in Frank's silence, and his eyes narrowed. "We all must be prepared to sacrifice for the cause. We must give what we are called upon to give. I wouldn't demand it of all of you if I didn't already know what I was asking."

"You don't have to try to convince me," Frank said. "It's not what you think. I'm not afraid of dying. It's something else. I could give my life, but I couldn't give up who I am."

"Unlike Better Living, I would never ask that of you."

"That's good to hear," Frank murmured. But he knew that the Manskinner was lying. Lying, without even knowing that he wasn't telling the complete and objective truth. And Frank let him.

Dr. Death's voice came out from the other side of a haze of static like the sun coming out from behind a cloud. Saying, "…one time we were talking about the Great War. I told my students that after that, words were poisoned. Words like "courage" like "valor" like "glory" and "sacred" and "duty" and "honor" were poisoned by hollowness. Obscene beside the concrete names of villages and battles and dead men's names. And my students said, Yes, but that's just a question for writers. That's only literature, not real life. And I told them, Why was literature invented at all, if not as a howl of protest against the refusal of suffering to be beautiful? That's what I said to them then. That's what I said to them. That's what I said. That's what…"

The voice vanished, and it did not return again. Ghoul did not miss it at all. In fact, he was relieved.


	15. Chapter 15

Chapter 4

They discharged Ghoul from the clinic in the middle of the day, with practically no warning at all. The tired, punctual, untalkative doctor breezed into his room with a handful of papers, flipped through them once as if she had not yet had time to look over their contents, and then told him to get his things together.

She waited, wearily patient, for him to lace up his boots and replace his gunbelts. Ghoul hadn't been back on his feet for long, and his joints were still slow and stiff. His mind, too, felt as if it had grown inflexible from disuse. Only that worried him. Ghoul knew from experience that his body was resilient, but he wasn't so sure about his brain.

He picked up the radio and tucked it under his arm as if it were a book with an impressive title. It fit up flush against his body, and it was only then that Ghoul realized his pistol was missing.

"There was one more thing," he said.

"Get it on your way out," the doctor told him.

"Do I owe you anything?" he asked. "I don't have money now, but—"

"Your brother paid already. You are free to go."

Ghoul's brows drew together in soft confusion, as if there were some word on the tip of his tongue, something he almost remembered.

"Listen. I don't really remember what happened when I came here. I think you probably saved my life, though. You're a really good doctor…"

"I'm not a doctor. I failed out of medical school in my third year," she told him. "I didn't like it very much. But I remembered a few things, and that was enough to get me a job here. All I did was provide you with antibiotics and a safe place to rest and recover. Anyone who wanted to live, even a little, would have."

"Thanks anyway," Ghoul said.

"Don't let it happen again." Coming from her, it sounded like an order, and Ghoul took it as one.

"Yes, ma'am." He hesitated a moment more, feeling like there ought to be something else to say, some other way to thank her. Feeling as if he ought to feel something more.

"Was there anything else?" she said.

"No. I'm going."

The doctor didn't follow him out. She was already on her way to the next room. Ghoul found his way out eventually. The attendant at the front desk brought his pistol out from a locked cabinet, and only after Ghoul had it on his person did anyone pay him any attention at all. He felt himself watched, closely, not kindly, until he was outside.

Not until he noticed that no one was waiting for him did he realize he had not expected there to be. Poison would come by, later, when he felt like it, but Ghoul suddenly didn't feel much like waiting for him. He knew that the others were holed up in a place on the beach, and he knew that it couldn't be far if Poison was willing to humble himself with walking to the clinic every day.

Ghoul passed through a street of abandoned storefronts, and then he was on the boardwalk. The beach below him was bone white, the sand as fine as powder. There were a few women laying out in the sun, and a couple of little kids playing in the surf. They all wore denim cutoffs and tank tops instead of bathing suits. This place had been a resort town once, catering to travelers from Battery City. Not the wealthiest citizens, but to the comfortable, unassuming middleclass.

All that was over now. This place had moved on. Now it functioned as a refugee camp for expats and a refueling station for smugglers. The locals were still gratuitously used by and reluctantly tolerant of the voracious American locusts that swarmed across the border in search of cheap goods, or easy freedom, or truth, or peace. Ghoul put it together through half-remembered hearsay and intuition, but when he had finished assembling all the facts in order, he did not feel as if he were any closer to understanding this strange place in which he had awakened.

A girl on a bike came down the boardwalk towards him. Ghoul flagged her down. He spoke slowly, precisely, completing each word before dredging the next out of the depths of his memories. "Conoces a un americano con pelo rojo?"

"El niño rico?

"Huh?" Ghoul said.

She laughed. "The little rich boy, you mean? He drives a stupid car, right? One with a bug painted on the hood?"

"Oh." Ghoul felt himself laughing too. "Yeah, that's him."

"Go down the beach a little. You'll see a bunch of old vacation houses. I think he's set up in one of those. You know, you should work on your Spanish if you're planning on staying."

"I don't know what I'm going to do," Ghoul said. "But I should probably work on it anyway."

She looked at him as if she wanted to say more, but in the end she only told him, "Good luck finding your friend."

Ghoul followed the boardwalk for another few blocks, until he spotted the Trans Am parked down on the beach. He followed the tire tracks – they were no longer fresh, no one had been out in the car for several days – down to one of the houses that crouched on the sand. There was a tall, lean figure out on the porch. He had a cigarette in his hand and a pair of huge sunglasses obscured most of his face. Ghoul had never seen him before, but somehow he knew that he was not in the wrong place. They had not met, but he looked exactly as Ghoul had imagined him.

Kobra watched him come up the path toward the house. Ghoul didn't hurry, and so he had time to see that Kobra never once took a drag off his cigarette. It smoldered in his hand, as if he had forgotten all about it.

"Hey," Ghoul said, when he was close enough to talk.

"Hey."

Ghoul stopped at the foot of the two stairs that led up to the porch, and he waited. Kobra said nothing. He was so still that it didn't seem like he breathed at all.

"Is Poison home?" Ghoul asked at last.

"That depends on who's asking." Kobra cocked a hand on his hip. He was so damn leggy he had to thrust his elbow way out from his body to do it. Ghoul supposed he thought it made him look tough, but he didn't have to go around striking poses to prove that. You could see it in his face, even what little of it was visible beneath the frames of his glasses, he was plenty tough.

"I kind of think you already know who I am," Ghoul said.

"I kind of think I do," Kobra replied. "But you don't look like I thought you would. Not that he ever let me get away with thinking much. He hardly talked about you at all; you could have been dead for all I knew. Though, come to think of it, I did see you once before. When I gave you my bed. I guess I didn't remember you."

Ghoul felt his expression tightening, shoring itself up. If Kobra was going to know anything about him, it at least wasn't going to be because he read it in the lines of Ghoul's face. "I've heard people say I'm not that memorable."

"People say all kinds of things," Kobra replied. "I don't think they mean half of them, and the other half are all lies."

In spite of himself, Ghoul laughed at that. "I guess. Look, I don't know what you want. I think maybe you're just trying to fuck with me. Can I see Poison or not?"

"Go on in," Kobra said. He stepped aside, swinging one foot back and pivoting his entire body, like an actor on a stage. Ghoul came up the stairs, and as he went by him he felt the hot cinders of Kobra's eyes, glaring at him from behind the lenses of his glasses. Kobra's entire body seemed to be wound up in an attitude of alertness, a prelude to some swift and sudden movement. As if he might, at any moment, uncoil his long limbs, lash out and push Ghoul backwards down the stairs or thrust out a petty foot to trip him. Not out of any sense of premeditated meanness, but just to see if he could and to ascertain what Ghoul would do if he did.

But he did not move at all, save for his left hand, which flicked away the spent butt of his cigarette. When Ghoul was past him, he did not turn around to know for sure, but he thought he heard Kobra fumbling inside his leather jacket for a fresh smoke.

Poison was there when he went inside, seated in the broken chair with a table fan in his lap. The cover was off the fan and he had a screwdriver out and buried to its hilt in the electronic guts.

"Hey," Ghoul said.

Poison looked up. A strange expression flickered across his face. "You're here. Is something wrong?"

"No. Why?"

"You looked odd for a second. I don't know…"

He put the fan down and came towards him. Ghoul let himself be kissed – a dry, perfunctory kiss – and then he said, "I guess I'm all right now. You knew I was coming back soon. Why didn't you tell me about…"

He saw Poison's gaze sway from his face, towards the door. When he found it empty, Kobra still outside, his eyes came back again. "Don't worry about him."

"Poison…"

"It's fine. I told you."

"I know, but you're acting weird about it."

"I'm telling you the truth," Poison said.

"I guess you are. But if you're hiding something important from me, I'm going to be mad. That's the truth too."

"Things changed while you were gone," Poison said quietly. "I didn't want them to, but they did. Do you want me to get rid of him? I will, if that's what you want. He's no one. No one that anyone would miss."

"Jesus, Poison…"

"Tell me if that's what you want."

"No," Ghoul said instantly, but he knew that he didn't mean it. If Poison was so goddamn game to get his hands dirty, then let him do it. Maybe then, at last, they could have quiet…

Ghoul's head swam, and he reached out blindly, his hand sliding down Poison's chest, hissing against his leather jacket, until his fingers hooked in his belt. He pulled him close. Poison moved with a curious loose-jointed jerk. It was not quite natural, not quite normal, but it was sexy. There was a lump of ice in Ghoul's throat, and when he tried to swallow around it, it felt like he was sucking on something jagged and inflexible.

He was already winded when he kissed Poison, and the kiss seemed to finish knocking the breath out of him completely. Poison's hands came up, cupping the sides of Ghoul's face. His skin was cool, dry, as if it had been powdered. It was the same, everything was the same as Ghoul remembered. But he no longer trusted his memories.

Then he felt Poison pulling away from him. Ghoul whimpered, made as if to lean after him, then stopped abruptly when he realized he was being watched.

"Hey," said Kobra. His voice was tough, husky, sexless. It had undergone a profound change in the five or so minutes since Ghoul had left him on the porch, as if Kobra had smoked a lifetime's worth of cigarettes and swallowed a lifetime's worth of whiskey while he was out there alone.

Ghoul glanced over his shoulder. Kobra was slouched in the doorway, slouched inside his leather jacket. The fingers of one hand clutched the doorframe like claws.

"What do you want?" Poison said. His gaze flicked to Ghoul's face, and something shifted behind his eyes. "Have you two met?"

"Yeah," Ghoul said.

Kobra looked at him darkly, hatefully, but Ghoul didn't get the feeling that it was a hate directed at him.

"I'm Kobra."

"Huh?"

"I never told you. You didn't ask."

"Oh," Ghoul said. "Sorry. I'm Fun Ghoul."

"What the fuck do you want?" Poison snapped. Kobra's eyes came up, and he hit Poison full in the face with the back loathing that swirled within. But it was not Poison he hated either.

"I need some cash," he said. "I want to go pick up a few things."

"You mean more tequila?"

"Who the fuck cares what I mean?"

Poison's eyes narrowed. "We're low on funds. We can't afford to throw money away on every little whim that pops into your head."

"Why didn't you say so sooner? I know how to get more money."

"I know you do," Poison said. "And it may come to that yet."

Kobra seemed to become very small and very rigid inside his leather jacket. "Sorry to bother you," he muttered, and he went out without even slamming the door.

"Poison…" Ghoul said, but Poison had already pulled away from him. He took off his jacket and tossed it over the broken chair, and then he sat down and beckoned Ghoul after him.

"Is he coming back?" Ghoul asked. His joints creaked when he sat on the floor beside Poison, as if his time in the hospital had prematurely aged his body by thirty years.

"Who gives a shit?" Poison said.

"I do," Ghoul whispered.

Poison's lips curled. "Why? Are you jealous?"

"What?" He knew that he shouldn't, that it was the wrong thing to do, but Ghoul laughed. It was too stupid not to. "Of course I'm not."

"That's a relief," Poison said. He slumped back against the wall and pulled Ghoul over on top of him so that Ghoul was straddling his hips. Poison held him by the collar and didn't let him up for a long time. Ghoul wasn't sure how much he liked it at first, but when it became clear that Kobra really had left, and that Jet wasn't about to come home and stumbled over them, he let himself get into it a little. He ran his hands up under Poison's shirt and traced the familiar rangy lines of musculature.

Poison slid down the wall, dragging Ghoul after him. He didn't seem to have anything particular in mind, and so Ghoul undid their belts just to have something to do with his hands.

"Yes," Poison sighed. "Yes, Ghoul…"

Ghoul's breath caught. Poison had never spoken to him quite like that before. Ghoul shook his hair back and slid down Poison's body, pressing his face into the apex of his legs and breathing the sweaty, leathery smell of him through his jeans.

"Please… please…" Poison said. Ghoul glanced up at him, but his head was thrown back and his expression was hidden. He unzipped Poison's jeans and eased his cock out and sucked him off while Poison whimpered and gasped and murmured above him. But he didn't taste the same as Ghoul remembered.

Afterwards, Poison looked at him for a long time, his eyes strange and silent and colorless. Then he sat up and began to straighten his clothes.

"Tell me about Kobra," Ghoul said.

"There's nothing to tell."

"I mean, like, is he one of us? Or…?"

"One of us?" Poison said quietly. "I don't know. I don't know him that well."

"He saved my life," Ghoul said.

"Oh?"

"I'm starting to remember a little of what happened when I was really sick."

Poison was quiet for a long time, and at first Ghoul thought that he did not mean to answer at all.

"He's a Killjoy," he said at last. "But that doesn't make him exactly like us."

* * *

Jet Star came back a little later, and he was surprised but not exactly thrilled to see Ghoul there. He rushed out at once and came back with about a hundred little shrimp tacos and some bottles of beer from a place down the street. Ghoul was starving, but he had a hard time eating. There was a knot of anxiety in his stomach. He kept looking between the two of them, trying to figure out if they liked it here, if they were happy. If they would stay.

It was almost dark when Kobra returned, carrying a paper sack with a bottle in it. He set the package down on the crate that stood in for a table and looked Ghoul square in the face with his flat black eyes and said, "Drink up."

"Where'd you get that?" Poison said, making no move to touch the tequila.

"Ran into an old friend," Kobra replied. He touched two fingers to his lips in an unconscious pantomime of smoking a cigarette. "It's no one you'd know. But he said we could do a job for him. There's money in it."

"Shit, kid, I didn't come down here to work," Jet said.

"It's nothing," Kobra told them. "Easy money. We just have to deliver a package. He said he'll even throw in a full tank of gas for us."

"Deliver it to where?" Poison asked.

Kobra took another drag off his ghostly cigarette. "Salton."

"No."

"Why the fuck not?" Kobra snapped. "You said we need work. Now we have some."

"I said we needed money," Poison said. "Not work. Especially not that kind of work."

"You know, it's not even your car," Kobra said. "It's Jet's. So he should decide what we're going to use it for. I don't know who the fuck elected you dictator for life of our little shitshow here, Poison, but—"

"No one did." Poison stood up. "No one elected me anything. Because this isn't a democracy."

He went outside, brushing past Kobra who did not give a single inch to get out of his way, but once he was gone he sank down with a weary sigh. He fixed Ghoul with an accusatory glare. "He'd listen if you told him…"

"What makes you the fucking expert?" Ghoul said.

"Wouldn't you like to know?"

"Shut up, both of you," Jet said abruptly. "I mean it. I knew this would happen…"

"Sorry," Ghoul muttered, but Kobra only laughed.

"He is right, though." Jet softened a little. "I know you don't want to hear it, kid, but we need the cash. And when you talk, Poison listens."

"I don't want…" Ghoul started to say, but stopped himself just in time. "I don't think we should go back to the Zones. Not after everything that happened. After all the trouble we had just getting out."

"Wasn't no trouble," Kobra said. "Not for me."

"I mean, maybe we can just find something down here. Forget about Battery City and the Zones…"

Kobra laughed, unpleasant and humorless. It hissed out of him, almost as if he were in pain. "There haven't been any jobs in this town since the tourists dried up, you goddamn naïve hick. If you think I'm going to break my back washing dishes or gutting fish down at the docks all day, then I've got news for you…"

"That's enough," Jet said, but Ghoul shook his head.

"It's okay. It's fine. Poison will do whatever the hell he wants, but I'll talk to him if that's what it takes to shut you up."

He stood up to follow Poison outside, but then he realized that Poison was already there, standing in the half-open door and watching him with a curious expression. It was impossible to tell how long he'd been back, or what he had heard.

"There's no need," Poison said quietly. "I've reconsidered."

Kobra laughed. "You were only gone for like three seconds."

"Regardless," Poison said sharply. "I have reconsidered. My first decision was based on certain antiquated notions I have. I've been trying to rid myself of them."

"Whatever," Kobra muttered. "At least something is finally going to happen."

"Yes," Poison said. "It is. I want to meet your contact tomorrow." He glanced over Ghoul and Jet. "You don't have to come. You two can stay out of this, if you'd rather."

Ghoul did, very badly, want to keep out of it. But when he thought of Poison and Kobra driving alone through the vast, secret-keeping darkness of the wasteland, he felt sick. "I'll ride along," he said quietly.

Kobra snatched up the bottle of tequila from the table and broke the seal. "I guess we can all finally have that drink now," he said. Jet brought some streaked and dirty glasses out of one of the cabinets, and Kobra poured generous shots for them. He didn't stiff anybody, even if he wanted to.

They drank the first round down and Kobra went to pour the second, but Poison said, "Wait. Not until the news is over."

He flipped the radio on and tuned in Dr. Death's broadcast.

"That guy is such an asshole," Kobra said. "With a reedy, asshole voice."

"There might be something about the border crossing," Poison told him.

The voice on the radio came through very clearly, the way it only did on clear nights. "A dream and a fear," it said. "Perhaps that's all life is. A dream and a fear."

Ghoul had never paid much attention to Dr. Death's rhetorical flourishes and proverbs and familiar quotations, but this time, he thought, he might be on to something. But the doctor was already talking again, a bluster of words, as if even he did not trust himself to say something that might mean anything at all.

"Bad news from the Zones, tumbleweeds: It looks like Jet Star and the Kobra Kid had a clap with an Exterminator that went all Costa Rica, and got themselves ghosted…"

There was more, but Ghoul didn't catch it. At the mention of those names, his pulse had leapt into his ears, drowning everything out in a rush of blood. He heard Kobra laugh, his voice far away and distorted, as if he stood at the far end of a long, lightless tunnel.

"Dumb motherfuckers," he sneered.

"Don't," Jet said. "Those poor kids…"

There might have been more, but Ghoul didn't hear it. He was already on his feet, half-lunging half-stumbling out the front door and into the night. His hips struck the railing that encircled the porch, and he gripped it hard. Splinters dug into his palms, but he didn't feel them, didn't care. He kept listening for the coyotes out in the desert, but he could only hear the calls of the seabirds.

"It's old news, you know," Poison said quietly. He stepped out on the porch and let the door fall softly shut behind him. "His reports were always a few days behind."

"I know," Ghoul said. "But that means it would have happened right when Jet… when Ray… decided he wanted to be someone else. Only he wanted to be the same as that dead person. And I don't know… I don't know what that means…"

Poison slipped up behind him and put an arm around his waist, drawing Ghoul back against him. "It's old news by now," he whispered, putting his mouth right up against Ghoul's ear, as if he could force the words inside him.

Ghoul turned in his arms, and leaned his forehead against Poison's shoulder. "Tell me again who I am."

"I'm sorry?"

"My name!" Ghoul said. "Tell me what it is. Tell me that you remember."

"Your name is Fun Ghoul."

"I didn't mean that name."

Poison's chest rose and fell with a quiet sigh. He curled the fingers of one hand around the back of Ghoul's neck and he said, "You know I don't like this."

"Never mind, then…"

But Poison tightened his grip, and said, very harshly and rapidly, "Your name's Frank. Are you satisfied?"

Ghoul was quiet for a long time, because it seemed to him that question required some serious thought. "No," he admitted at last. "I thought I would be, but—"

He leaned back suddenly, so he could see Poison's face. A fringe of red hair had fallen out of place, and Ghoul reached out and pushed it back so he could see Poison's eyes, but they were blank and guarded. Ghoul kissed him on the mouth.

"Can we just hang out here for a while?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Can you just, I don't know, hold me or something?"

"Yes, I can do that," Poison said.

After that, neither of them said much. Poison led him around to the side of the house where the light from the boardwalk didn't penetrate, and Ghoul thought that he wanted to fool around. But all they did was sit on the sand with their backs up against the wall. Ghoul put his head on Poison's shoulder; only after a long time like that did Poison finally relax.

Eventually, Ghoul slept. Poison didn't disturb him at all.


	16. Chapter 16

Chapter 5

Ghoul woke up with sand in his clothes, to a morning that was cold and dim and gray. He was stiff in every limb, and chilled through by the damp cold of the ocean. His head was on Poison's shoulder, and Poison's arm was around him, but it slid away when Ghoul straightened up.

Poison was still asleep, his back against the wall of the house and his chin sunk into the collar of his jacket. When Ghoul leaned over and kissed the corner of his mouth, Poison stirred but did not wake. He wasn't shivering, and he seemed comfortable enough, so Ghoul left him there and went around the back of the house to piss. He hurt all over, but not too badly. Sleeping outside couldn't possibly be that much worse than sleeping on the bare floor, after all, and at least he'd gotten away from that little shit Kobra for a while.

He finished up, and when he came back around the corner Poison was already gone. There was a messy little crater in the sand where he had been sitting, but otherwise no sign of him. Ghoul was trying to decide whether or not he wanted to go look for him, when he heard music coming from around the front of the house. At first, he thought it was the radio, but it became obvious pretty quickly that it wasn't. It was too uncertain, too unpolished. And it wasn't good, but, for a moment, it sounded like it was.

The sun had just started to come up. There was a gray crust of hoarfrost on the sand, steaming as it evaporated. Ghoul went around front, and he found Kobra sitting out on the porch, his back against the railing, bare feet up on the step, and his guitar sitting across his lap. It was pretty cold out, but he was acting like he didn't feel it. His jacket was off, and all the hairs on his arms were standing up. There was a faint bluish cast to his lips, and dark shadows under his eyes. He stabbed his fingers vengefully into the strings, and he said, more muttering than singing,

_As I went to the square, to see my brother hang  
The only words that he could say:  
Until we meet again_

Ghoul wasn't sure if he could talk to him, if they were on speaking terms, but Kobra had his long legs sprawled all over the stairs and Ghoul couldn't get by. At last, Kobra came to the end of the bar and he scratched the last chord into silence. He rolled his eyes up to look Ghoul in the face.

"Hey."

"Hey yourself," Ghoul said. He dug the toe of his boot into the sand. "You sleep all right?"

Kobra shrugged. "I'll let you know when I get around to it."

"You've been up all night? I thought you had things to do today."

"Couldn't even close my eyes," Kobra said. "I just feel all strange inside, you know?"

"Yeah, I do."

The sun was higher now, its rays just beginning to fall on Kobra's face. He reached up blindly, and fumbled his big sunglasses off the top of his head and over his eyes. The sunrise put a little color back in his pale cheeks, but it looked like it had been painted on. He started to get up, dragging the guitar along by its neck. Halfway there, the strength seemed to go out of his legs and he gripped the railing to steady himself.

He was watching something behind Ghoul, something out in the direction of the ocean. "Look," he said.

Ghoul didn't want to. The truth was, even this new, improved, nicer version of Kobra made him feel awfully tired. But it didn't seem worth it to start up their bickering from the night before, and so he glanced back over his shoulder.

The sun had just crested the roofs of the houses, and the ocean was ablaze. Thick fog coiled off the surf, and the water looked red.

"I wish it really would burn," Kobra sighed. "I wish it would all burn, just like that. Don't you?"

Ghoul shuddered. "No."

"Really? I figured everybody did."

Ghoul looked violently away. By the time he had forced himself to turn back and face it, the illusion was already starting to face. "I guess you don't remember the Great Fire, do you?" he said.

"Sure I do," Kobra replied. "A little."

"Well, I remember it a lot."

Kobra turned slowly to look at him. The bottom half of his face was immobile, the top half obscured, and Ghoul honestly had no idea what was going through his mind.

"I didn't know," he said at last. "Sorry."

"No, you're okay." Ghoul's hands were shaking, and he shoved them into his pockets to hide it. A rivulet of cold sweat trickled down his back. "You didn't know."

"Guess you're not quite over it, are you?" Kobra said.

"I'm as over it as I'll ever be." Ghoul was not looking at him, could not bear to look at him. He had the horrifying feeling that Kobra was laughing it him from behind the shield of his dark sunglasses, and he knew he couldn't do anything about it. "I mean it's been, what? Fifteen years?"

"I was just a kid back then," Kobra said, and Ghoul couldn't tell whether he meant it in agreement or dissent. "You must have been too."

"Yeah," Ghoul replied. "I was little. Four or five. Or six. It's fucked up, I don't even know how old I really am. But that's not even the most fucked up thing. The worst part is, I can't even remember what it was like before. I just have these flashes. I can't even tell if they're real, or things I made up. False memories. Like, I know there were these things: a family, a house, a school, a church. But my first real, concrete memory is watching them all burn."

Kobra was watching him intently, his lips curled into a curious and dreamy smile. "They're real," he said.

"How the fuck do you know?"

"I know because you're so goddamn good. All those good-people things, they got inside you. And even if you wanted to get rid of them, even if you wanted to be a little bit bad, someone like you wouldn't even know where to start."

Ghoul said nothing. He knew that Kobra was looking him up and down, knew by the bloodless, reptilian quality of his stare.

"I'm going to go make some breakfast," Kobra said. "You want anything? We got toast. Just toast."

"Don't put yourself out," Ghoul told him coldly.

Kobra laughed, unpleasantly and without humor. He turned, dragging his guitar behind him, and went inside.

* * *

They took the Trans Am into the city. Once they got away from the beachfront real estate, there were a lot of square, flat-fronted, Spanish-style buildings. The storefronts had big looming billboards over them, and the apartments all had narrow, efficient balconies that did not overhang the street.

There weren't a lot of people out. Most of the shops were boarded up, and the residences had a dejected, abandoned look to them.

Poison was driving, and Kobra was up in the front seat, in Ghoul's old seat. He had the window down and his arm out in the stifling air. The needle on the gas gauge hovered at empty, but Kobra was sure they could make it. They went through an industrial section of town, with a lot of locked-down warehouses and old boat shops and tour companies, and when they came out the other side they were in the hills. It was a lot hotter than it had been down by the ocean, but green succulent bushes and creosotes grew thick along the sides of the road and made for a pretty nice drive.

The houses were adobe, and painted pastel colors. Kobra pointed one out, and Poison pulled off onto the gravel track that led up to the dirt lot out front. There was a well-tended vegetable garden in one corner of the yard, and a big new-looking yellow Hummer pared on the side of the house. It wasn't what Ghoul had expected, and he knew that if the place hadn't been so goddamn pleasant and homey, he wouldn't have had half the misgivings about this that he did.

A little darkeyed kid of ten or eleven came out the front door and stood silently watching them as they piled out of the Trans Am.

"You're here for El," she said, not making it a question.

Ghoul was a couple of steps in back of Jet, and he almost stumbled over him when Jet drew up short all of a sudden. He shuddered, and a strange, faraway look clouded over his face. Ghoul pretended not to see; they had always extended one another at least that much courtesy.

Jet crouched down on his heels opposite from the kid, so he could look her in the face. His voice when he spoke was unsteady, as if he was remembering a way of talking that he had assumed he'd never need again. "Hey there. What's your name? Is this where your parents live?"

The girl stared at him steadily, without blinking. "I'm Grace."

"That's a pretty name," Jet practically sighed.

Kobra rolled his eyes and pounded on the screen door. Grace's shoulders drew up at the noise, and her eyes darted toward the source. When she saw that it was nothing to worry about, her gaze swung back in a slow, almost unwilling, pendulum to Jet's face.

The door opened from within, and Ghoul filed in after Kobra and Poison. They left Jet in the yard, talking in an undertone to the weird, quiet kid. Inside, they were shown into a sunny front room with a decorative fireplace, a big oak dining table, and a bunch of Ansel Adams prints hanging on the walls. Kobra introduced them to a tanned, blond, middle-aged _Americano_ with a bald patch in back, a receding hairline up front, and a good deal of muscle tone remaining under his paunch.

"This is El Chupacabra," Kobra said. He nodded to Poison and Ghoul. "They're a little extra protection I picked up. Hope that suits you."

"It suits me fine," said El. He glanced at Poison. "But he looks like he's the one I really ought to be talking to."

"He's my partner," Kobra said icily. "You can talk to us both."

"Whatever you say." El held up his beefy hands in a gesture of goodwill. "It's you that has to split up the pay for this little errand."

"What exactly is this errand?" Poison said.

"Kobra didn't tell you?"

"I'd rather hear it from you."

El shrugged. "You head up to Salton and deliver a certain suitcase to a certain address. You'll roll out tomorrow evening, make the border crossing over night, and if you're back here by ten in the morning, I'll have 500 USD waiting for you."

"What happens after ten?" Poison said.

"After ten, I won't be here anymore. And you might not like my replacement."

Ghoul was suddenly aware that Poison was looking at him. His eyes had shifted, almost imperceptibly beneath the veil of his long lashes, to Ghoul's face. He was asking something, waiting for something, and Ghoul was frightened, for he had no idea what they ought to do, what they even could do in a situation like this. But he tilted his head slightly, a nod of ascent, and Poison turned back to El and said, "We accept."

"I knew you were the one who was really making the decisions," El said. "Knew it from the first time I looked at you."

Poison narrowed his eyes. "You might pay our transportation expenses up front, as a gesture of goodwill."

"Sure," El said. He made a vague wave towards the front of the house. "If Grace is out there, she'll show you where we keep the gasoline. You can fill up your tank, just don't get greedy. I have to make a living here, after all."

"Yes, you are very much a capitalist," Poison said with wintery disdain. He turned on his heels and went out, leaving Ghoul to stumble after him. Kobra came up behind them more slowly.

Jet was still crouched down talking to the kid, and he straightened up, looking a little embarrassed, when he saw them. Grace looked at them without much trust, but without much fear, either.

"You're supposed to help us fill up the car," Poison said.

Grace squinted at him, as if gauging his sincerity, and then she motioned vaguely for them to follow her. Poison and Ghoul hauled a couple of ten-gallon cans and a funnel out of the shed that she showed them, and as they were siphoning the fuel into the Trans Am, Kobra wandered over, looking sullen and sulky. He was probably upset that they'd made him look bad in front of his friend. But, Ghoul thought vindictively, he shouldn't be running around with such shitty friends in the first place.

Kobra folded his arms and watched them gas up the car. While he was distracted, Grace slipped up next to him and boldly reached for the pistol on his hip. Before she could get it out of the holster, Kobra slapped her hand away.

"What the hell is a little kid doing in a place like this anyway?" he snapped.

"It's not like I haven't been other places before," Grace shot back. "What's wrong with this place?"

"Nice little girls shouldn't be hanging around meth labs."

"Nice little boys shouldn't be hanging around you-know-where, but that didn't stop you, did it?"

Grace dodged back, as if she expected Kobra to make a grab for her, but he didn't. He only stood, rigid and pale, no longer looking at her, or at the car, or at anything, really, save whatever scenes might be running through his head.

When she saw that he wasn't after her, Grace jammed the toe of her canvas sneaker into the dirt and kicked a spume of gravel in Kobra's direction. Then she took off running, dodging around the back of the house and out of sight.

* * *

When they got back to the house, no one really felt like talking much. They had almost thirty-six hours until they were scheduled to pick up the suitcase from El, and if Ghoul could have worked out in his head how many seconds that was he was sure he would have counted down every one. It was too much time to just wile away doing nothing, and too little to accomplish anything. In a fit of impotence and irritation, he wrapped himself up in one of the worn out blankets and went to sleep on the floor.

He woke up to late afternoon sunlight streaming through the windows and Jet slinking around trying to talk someone into going into town with him. He was pretty adamant about it, and Ghoul figured he was still bothered by that kid – Grace – who they'd met earlier. He felt a little bit bad for him, and a little bit sick of being the butt of Kobra's sly glances, so he agreed to go along.

But as soon as they got off the beach and up on the drag where all the bars were, Ghoul knew he couldn't go through with it. It was too loud, the press of anonymous bodies too tight and hot and close. He felt like he was there all over again, on the floor of that dirty shack in the desert, with a heavy hand in his hair and a knife at his throat. Knowing that all he was anymore was meat. Just meat.

Jet was looking at him in concern, was offering him a shot. But it was Jet that was the illusion and the Zones that were real.

"I'm sorry…" Ghoul whispered, and he headed for the door, leaving Jet to practice his Spanish on the pretty bartended.

He was glad for the chance to walk home alone. The cold air revived him a little, and by the time he made it back to the beach, he had his thoughts in order again. He knew he couldn't keep dropping off like that if they were going to head back across the border. He'd only end up a liability if he kept it up.

The moon wasn't up yet, and the beach was almost completely dark. Ghoul stumbled along until he caught sight of the house. There was a dim light on in one of the windows and Ghoul followed it. When he opened the front door, the first thing he saw was Kobra, sprawled all over Poison's lap, fingers in his red hair and lips up against his ear.

Ghoul's lips felt numb when he tried to speak. "What the _fuck_?"

Poison stood up at the sound of his voice, dumping Kobra off his lap and onto the floor. Kobra just sat there, trying to look dignified. It was pretty fucking funny, actually, but Ghoul couldn't have laughed if he'd wanted to.

"I didn't know you'd be back so soon," Poison said mildly. He ran a hand through his hair, smoothing it back from his forehead.

"What were you…?" Ghoul started to say, but he didn't give a shit what the answer was going to be.

Kobra was smirking up at him from his perch on the floor. One hand crept across the boards and began to slowly, possessively ascend the curve of Poison's calf. Ghoul clamped his mouth shut so hard that his teeth ground together, then he turned around and walked out.

He heard someone come out the screen door behind him, but he didn't look back.

"You know we never made each other any promises," Poison's voice drifted after him.

Ghoul stopped. He didn't want to, but in spite of everything he felt himself called back. Bending, bending, beneath Poison's inexhaustible will.

"That's not an excuse," he said quietly.

Poison came towards him. His boots made two clean tattoos of sound on the stairs, and then no noise at all as he stepped onto the sand. "I'll stop right now, if that's what you want. You know, he was always the one who wanted me. He was always the one who started it."

Ghoul turned on him, and even in the low light he could make out the calm, slightly bemused look on Poison's face. It was just another apology to him, just another irritating, nonsensical ritual that he had to go through to get back on Ghoul's good side. He wasn't sorry, and he didn't understand a thing about real suffering. And suddenly Ghoul wanted to hurt him, the way only he could. He wanted to make him sorry for every time he had ever been kind, or almost thoughtful, or gentle.

"Sure, he liked how pretty you were. Who could resist that? You're so fucking pretty." Ghoul's voice had become both shrill and hoarse. "Is that how Korse liked you, Poison? Pretty?"

He didn't see Poison's hand come up, but he certainly felt it when he hit him. Ghoul was no glassjaw, but he went down hard. He blacked out for not more than a couple of seconds, and when he came to he was laid out flat on the sand and he could taste blood in his mouth. He lifted his head in time to see Poison turn away.

"Gerard!"

Poison snapped his head around to look at him. "I told you not to call me that."

"Gerard, Gerard, Gerard! I'll call you whatever I want! And you'll look at it! You'll fucking face it."

For a second, he thought Poison was going to hit him again, but he shoved his clenched fist into the pocket of his jacket and he walked away. Ghoul let his head fall back against the sand and felt the blood run down his throat. He heard the Trans Am start up, and for a moment the headlights washed over him. Then Poison pulled out and drove away.

He wasn't sure how long he lay there, tasting blood and self-pity in equal parts. After a while, Kobra came out of the house and stood over him.

"Tide's coming in," he said.

"Go fuck yourself," Ghoul muttered.

Kobra crouched down and helped Ghoul to his feet, and Ghoul let himself be prodded inside. Kobra piled up all the blankets so Ghoul could have something to lay on that wasn't the bare floor, and then he fed him a couple of shots of tequila and pressed a handkerchief to his nose and eventually the throbbing in Ghoul's head quieted down.

"Feeling better?" Kobra said.

"As soon as I am, I'm going to kick your fucking ass, homewrecker."

"Why the fuck are you so mad at me?" Kobra tossed his blond hair. "I heard most of what you said out there. You know, Poison never told me anything about you. I had no way of knowing you two were serious."

"Poison doesn't know any better…"

Kobra laughed, bitterly. "So, Poison is the innocent, socially-retarded victim here, and I'm the ex-fucking-hooker that played upon his innocence. Guess you'd better hurry up and kick my ass then."

Ghoul groaned and let his head fall back. "I'm not going to do that. Just… I don't know. I need this place, and I guess you need it to. So do whatever you want. Keep fucking him. You're probably better at it than I am. I've got so much shit wrong with me. But I don't care anymore. I don't care about any of it."

He closed his eyes so he wouldn't have to see Kobra looking at him with curious sympathy.

"Do you want another drink?" Kobra asked at last, quietly. "I can play you a song. Sometimes it helps. You're right, you know. We're both here, and we don't have anywhere better to be. Might as well make the most of it, right?"


	17. Chapter 17

Chapter 6

"De nada," Kobra kept saying as they followed the highway north. "It's nothing. It will be over before we know it."

Ghoul knew that he was talking a lot because none of the rest of them seemed to want to take up the slack. He didn't mind all that much. Kobra had a low, pleasant, purring voice, and it felt good rattling around inside Ghoul's throbbing head. He was pretty sure he had a black eye, though no one had said anything about it to him. Poison wasn't apologizing, and Jet wasn't looking him in the face, and Ghoul had decided he wasn't going to give a shit anymore.

All they had to do was drop off the suitcase, and then everything could go back to normal.

It was nice to imagine it happening like that. Like a clip locking into a gun or a tire settling into a rut in the road, something would snap into place and then it would all feel right. But none of them had ever even known what normal was, or if they had, it had been too long ago to hold out any hope of going back.

Ghoul looked out the window, watching night fall over the land. He'd been shuffled into the backseat again, and all the angles seemed different and wrong. Occasionally, a car would come by, going the opposite direction, and its headlights would briefly illuminate the inside of the Trans Am, turning the windows into mirrors. In those moments, Ghoul could see his own face, pale and unsmiling, lashed with bruises. He barely knew himself, and he despised what little he could recognize.

"Everything will be fine," Kobra said. "El won't cheat us. He never cheats other Americans. He's in with the cartels, you know. It's not like they respect him, or even like him. They just let him have Salton because it's a small, shitty, uncertain market. Don't repeat that to him. He likes to pretend he's a big man."

"He sounds like a great guy," Ghoul said.

"He's a fucking parasite."

"I wasn't being serious."

"I was."

Kobra sighed, folding his arms so that his jacket was bundled around him. "He doesn't even speak Spanish beyond like three words. He's lived here almost twenty years now, but he never even bothered to learn. He hates this country, but he likes being an American who isn't tied down by America. What else can we do, though?"

"I don't know," Ghoul said.

"I mean it," Kobra said quietly. "Because you don't actually think I like doing this, do you? You don't think Poison and Jet like it, right? But as long as there are people who hate living in the Zones, and as long as there are places like Salton that even the cartels have written off as a loss, then there will be money in this. That's good enough for me, and if it isn't for you…"

He shrugged, trailing off.

"That's enough," Poison said abruptly. "He understands that already. No one wants to listen to a lecture tonight."

"Sorry," Kobra sneered, and, for no real reason at all, Ghoul wanted to apologize too. Only not to Poison. What he really wished was that the Manskinner would appear in front of him for just a moment, just long enough for Ghoul to tell him how sorry he was, for everything, before he vanished once again, forever.

It was fulldark by the time they got to the river. Poison cut west off the highway before they came into view of the water and drove parallel to the bank until he found the well-worn road that led up to the ford. He took the Trans Am out into the black water at a crawl. The river surged up over the wheel wells, halfway to the windows, and then it leveled out. Water began to trickle in through the cracks around the doors, and Ghoul snatched the suitcase off the floor and held it in his lap.

"Take it easy," Jet said. "It's going to smell like a sewer in here."

Poison took them across slowly. The steering slipped on the loose sand, and the engine started to growl as water got in under the hood. Then the front tires bumped up onto solid ground, and Ghoul's breath left him in a silent sigh of relief.

The feeling soured quickly though, once he realized they were back in the Zones.

"Keep your eyes open," Poison said. "Nothing's going to go down, but if it does I want everyone awake, and sharp, and with their batteries charged."

It had not occurred to Ghoul until that moment that Poison might have his own misgivings about being back here. Until he realized that, it had not occurred to him to be afraid, either.

Poison found the smugglers trail that wound through the brush. They were a hundred miles out from Battery City, but Ghoul could see the lights on the horizon like a dusty gray stain. He was gripped by a sudden sense of sick dread, a humming in his ears and a tight sinking in the pit of his stomach. The words – wait, stop, turn around – came to his lips and stuck there. He wanted to say them, and he felt that at any moment he would, but he never got the chance.

They passed under a low overhang of red rock, and both the front tires exploded. The hood of the Trans Am lifted a few inches off the ground, and then sank back onto with a bone-jarring bang. While Poison fought to bring the car back under control, the rear tires burst in turn. Ghoul braced himself against the seat and clutched the suitcase close. The Trans Am rattled along on its rims for another few feet, and then came to rest, buried up to the bumper, in a sand dune.

Then engine was still running, but otherwise it was weirdly quiet. No one had made any sound at all during the crash, not even to curse or cry out. Poison cut the ignition and tucked the key safely into the pocket of his jacket.

"Everyone is going to get out at once," he said quietly. "Jet, you get the tires patched. The rest of us are going to cover you. Ghoul, you watch the road we just came up. Kobra, the road where we were going. I'll stay on him while he does the repairs. Something is going to happen. It's just a matter of what, and how soon."

Ghoul realized he was still holding on to the suitcase. He tucked it under the back seat, feeling the wet carpet squish beneath its weight. He touched his pistol in its holster like a talisman. Kobra and Poison slid out of the Trans Am in perfect tandem. They left the seats propped forward so Ghoul and Jet could climb out in their wake. The cold, dry night air stung them through their clothes.

It was dark under the shadow of the stone ridge, and the sides of the road were overgrown with thorny bushes making it hard to walk. Later, Ghoul would come to grudgingly admire how well-chosen the spot had been for an ambush, how much planning must have gone into it. Whatever else they might have been, they were at least professionals.

Jet swung out of the backseat and immediately started for the trunk where they kept the jack and the tools. He'd only made it a single step when a single beam of light illuminated the night. It was bright enough to blind them, sudden enough to disorient. Ghoul reached for the side of the car to steady himself. From somewhere beyond the corona, a woman's voice said, "Keep your hands out of your pants, boys. I wouldn't want you to shoot your balls off by accident."

Ghoul's hand fluttered before his face in a futile attempt to shield his eyes from the light. He fumbled at his side for his gun, but found only an empty holster swinging loose against his ribs. A woman's voice, very close to his ear, said, "I'll hold onto your toys for now, kid."

He turned, bringing his arm up to shove her away, but a hand closed around his wrist, forcing it down again. The fingers were small, tapered, deceptively strong. She forced him to turn so his back was to her, drawing his arm around and twisting it up behind his back. Her booted foot struck him in the back of the legs, making his knees unhinge. He pitched forward as he fell, and his forehead hit the door of the Trans Am.

He saw stars.

Kobra hit the dirt next to him. He landed hard on his shoulder, and made a little hissing sound between his teeth. Ghoul's eyes were starting to adjust to the harsh light. He could see the source of the blaze now: a motorcycle parked hard to the side of the trail, with a florescent spotlight mounted between the handlebars. It was one of those spindly, 1950's Triumph bikes, freshly chromed and painted, looking like it was brand new off the lot.

Ghoul leaned back on his knees, but the barrel of a gun pressed into the back of his neck brought him up short.

"Stand up slow," the woman said. She sounded like she was about to burst into laughter.

Ghoul got to his feet, and the woman took him by the shoulder with that brittle, no-nonsense grip of hers and threw him back onto his ass in the dust, away from the car now, out of the way. There were three more Triumphs hidden back beneath the shelter of the rock. The one closest to Ghoul was royal purple in color, with the words "GO GALT" written in neat ivory capitals on the engine frame.

Before Ghoul had time to contemplate that, Ray hit the dirt on his right side. Ghoul flinched away from him, just in time for Kobra to land on his left, half in the sand and half in Ghoul's lap.

"Watch it, shithead," Ghoul muttered under his breath, shoving him off.

Kobra straightened himself out with as much dignity as he could manage. "Try to keep your big ass out of my way next time…"

"Shut up!" the woman snapped. She stood over them with a pair of revolvers in her hands. Tall and thin, rigged up with a great deal of lean muscle cording her arms and a great deal of silvery-blue hair spilling down her back. She wore a short denim skirt, thigh-high boots, and a motorcycle jacket left unzipped and open over her naked chest.

Ghoul noticed that Ray was staring at her, like he'd never seen a pair of perky tits in their natural environment before. But, no, it wasn't even her tits he was looking at.

"Angela?" he said, in a tone that suggested he hardly believed it himself.

The woman turned her sharp eyes on him, and her expression abruptly softened.

"Ray," she said tenderly. And then she booted him in the face.

"Astor, what have you got over there?" The woman who had been manning the spotlight stepped out into the open now. She was another beauty, dressed in fitted motorcycle leathers, with a puff of curly hair the color of cotton candy. A shotgun was braced in her arms, with both barrels thumbed back.

"Bunch of pretty boys," Astor said, watching at them down the unwavering barrels of her revolvers.

"This one ain't so bad either." Pink-curls shouldered her shotgun and came forward. Ghoul craned his neck to follow her progress, and when Astor jerked one of her revolvers at him, he just bobbed his head so he could see around her.

Poison was still on the other side of the car, still on his feet, flanked on either side by a lean, leather-clad woman. Each of them had a hold of one of his arms and a pistol jammed into his ribs. Ghoul could see that he did not look frightened, or even particularly worried. He just watched Pink-curls with a mild, curious expression as she approached.

"I assume you are the Dagnys," he said.

Pink-curls stopped in front of him, looking him up and down. She would have had a couple of inches of height on him even without her heels, but with them on she stood a full head taller. "I'm Rockefeller." She inclined her head slightly, making her curls bob. "That's Astor over there." With another movement of her head she indicated the woman on Poison's left. "Carnegie, and Vanderbilt. What do they call you?"

"Party Poison."

Rockefeller laughed once, harshly. "Oh, I see. Mr. Party Poison, I hope you understand, this is nothing personal…"

"No," Poison said. "It isn't."

There was a knife in his hand where a moment ago there had been nothing. It gleamed, silver and mean in the moonlight, making a tight arc up from Poison's hip to Rockefeller's throat. She moved in a blur, as fast as he was, but fast in a different way. She twitched the shotgun to the side, and Poison's knife clanged harmlessly off the barrel. Before he could correct for a second strike, she jammed the butt of the gun into his midsection, doubling him over. Then she dropped an elbow into the back of his neck, laying him out flat.

Ghoul heard him shuffling in the dust on the other side of the car, trying to raise himself to his knees. Rockefeller drove her boot into the small of his back, stomping him flat.

"Poison…" Kobra said, without any urgency, any inflection, at all.

Ghoul actually felt a little sorry for him. What a goddamn bleeding heart he had.

Rockefeller exchanged a few words with the other two women. She didn't lift her foot from Poison's back. Ghoul imagined him over there, propped up just enough to keep the dust out of his mouth. Unembarrassed and unruffled, and just as patient as he needed to be.

The one called Vanderbilt – a statuesque dark-skinned woman with a fauxhawk like blue-black glass – started around the car towards them. She wore spurs on her motorcycle boots, and one of them flashed briefly as it caught the light. It was a gleam not unlike the gleam of a knife that had once crossed in front of Ghoul's face to rest against his throat.

He flinched. Jet noticed, and set a hand on the small of his back. "Relax," he said quietly. "The Dagnys have been all over the radio lately. They don't kill anyone, really. They just make a nuisance of themselves."

Ghoul loathed him, and his solid paternal comfort.

Astor had overheard. The look she fixed on Jet was not so much withering as it was stern. It was not, when you really looked at it, all that different from the look Jet himself dusted off and plastered on whenever Poison had said something callous and disappointing.

"We've been known to make exceptions," she said.

"I think you just want that package we're delivering," Jet said. "I hope you're being careful. That stuff is dangerous."

Scowling, Astor stuffed one of her revolvers into her belt. She grabbed Jet by the shoulder and, with a practiced flick of her wrist, flipped him over on his stomach. He sputtered a little in protest, but Astor planted a knee in his back. Then, after holstering the other revolver, she twisted his arms behind him and bound his wrists with twine.

"You were condescending back in college too, Ray," Ghoul heard her say.

"It's Jet Star, actually."

"You haven't changed as much as you think, Jet Star."

"Neither have you. You still look great, you know."

"Get a fucking room you two," Kobra snapped. It was the last thing he had a chance to say before Vanderbilt grabbed him and turned him over and started to truss him up. Kobra did not struggle, but he cursed in a low, steady monotone, half of which didn't even seem to be directed at Vanderbilt at all.

Ghoul realized what was coming, and when Astor finished with Jet and turned to him, he didn't resist her at all. He even put his hands behind his back so that she didn't have to get too rough with him. She was pretty rough anyway, but Ghoul knew he didn't have much fight in him anymore. He was glad no one could see him. He could live with the fact that he and become complacent and cowardly, but he didn't want to deal with Poison's contempt, or Jet's pity, or the Manskinner's disappointment, or Kobra's whatever he decided to throw at him.

He kept very still beneath the slight weight of Astor's body, beneath the clever efficiency of her hands. His body sank a little into the sand, and that actually felt kind of nice. Behind him, he could hear Carnegie ransacking the car. She would find the suitcase easily enough, but it sounded like she was rummaging through the trunk and the glove box and slitting open the upholstery too.

"I hope you're not taking this personally," Rockefeller said. Her voice had taken on a ringing, rhetorical quality, like a politician accustomed to giving speeches. "The Dagnys don't do things for personal reasons. We never have. We've rejected the old ways of sentimentality and compromise. In the Wasteland, there is only the individual. His strengths, and her genius. By reason and logic rather than emotion and weak tribalism…"

"Who's she talking to?" Jet whispered.

Astor shrugged. She finished with Ghoul's wrists and turned around and sat on him. "You. She wants you to convert. She wants you to understand our philosophy. Is it working?"

"Is it supposed to be?"

"Give it time," Astor said. She stood up. "This is taking too long. We need to go."

Rockefeller broke off in the middle of her extemporized speech. "Are you going to start giving the orders now?" she said coldly.

"I'm warning you that you're being inefficient," Astor replied. "I don't need to give the orders to do that."

Ghoul felt a weird thrill when he realized that they incubated the same petty rivalries and resentments that he did.

At a word from Rockefeller, the Dagnys rounded up their bikes. Ghoul sat up before they had left, and he worked his wrists against their bonds, trying to restore sensation to his hands. He felt as if a spell had been broken, or a curse lifted. He wasn't afraid, or angry, or even embarrassed that the Dagnys had outmaneuvered them so thoroughly. He was hardly anything substantial at all, as he watched Astor shove the black suitcase into the saddlebag on her bike and swing a leg over the seat.

"Wait," Jet said. He was sitting up too, and scrubbing his cheek on the shoulder of his jacket to remove a smudge of sand. "So, can I usually find you here?"

She looked at him, and laughed, and then gunned the engine of her bike and was gone with the others. The four red taillights were visible for a long time. Ghoul watched them receding. He had forgotten what they were, or why he was here.

Kobra had already slipped out of the ropes around his wrists, he tossed them aside and flexed his fingers and patted his hair back into place. "Well. That went well."

By then Poison had picked himself up off the ground and dusted himself off. As he came around to their side of the Trans Am, Kobra looked up at him. "Nice work out there."

Poison glanced at him and his expression tightened, but he said nothing. He knelt down beside Ghoul and cut through his bonds. Ghoul was slow to react, so Poison slipped his hand under his chin and tilted it back so that their eyes met.

"I'm fine," Ghoul said, and looked away.

"Good," Poison said. "Then get the lantern out of the trunk and help Jet get the tires patched. Kobra, you come with me."

"What the fuck for?" Kobra said. He had fished his crushed cigarettes out of his jacket and was trying to make a broken one stay together long enough to light. "Those girls are long gone. Good fucking riddance."

"Kobra…"

"I'll go," Ghoul said. He still wasn't looking at Poison, but it had gotten hard not to. "I need some air. I mean, a walk. Whatever."

Poison made a little motion for him to follow, and they went after the Dagnys on foot. They didn't speak at all. Poison's eyes were trained on the ground, and when he found the place where the motorcycle tracks broke away from the main trail and lit out into the open desert, he stopped and lit a cigarette.

"I guess you couldn't just do nothing," Ghoul said quietly.

Poison looked at him curiously over the cherried end of his cigarette.

"I'm glad, in a way," Ghoul went on. "I mean, not that they kicked our asses, which they did. I'm not glad we got humiliated. But I'm glad we can't do what we came up here to do. That's not the way I want to live, without any purpose at all. Just to survive. I don't want all of this to have meant nothing…"

He had to stop. His voice was going to break in a second.

Poison dropped his cigarette and ground it out beneath his boot, then he slid his hand up under the curtain of Ghoul's hair, cupping his cheek. "I'm really sorry I hit you."

"I had it coming," Ghoul said.

"People who have the sort of feelings for each other that we do shouldn't hurt each other like that."

Ghoul smiled weakly. "Are you trying to tell me you love me or something, Poison?"

"I wasn't thinking about that, exactly. But…"

"No, don't," Ghoul said. "Don't worry about it. You shouldn't have hit me, but I shouldn't have said what I said. Friends shouldn't say shit like that to each other."

He turned his head just enough to feather a kiss over Poison's palm. He slipped out of his grip and started back up the trail, towards the light.

* * *

It took most of the night to get the Trans Am running again. They had one spare stuffed under the back seats, but the other three tires had to be patched and then laboriously re-inflated by hand. By the time they were done, the sky in the east was gray with the coming and there was nothing to do but limp back across the border.

No one much liked the idea of going back to Baja now: it seemed too much like tempting fate, or admitting defeat. But it was closer than Salton, and, it seemed, a better bet to find a sympathetic mechanic than the San Diego Autonomous Region, so Poison turned the Trans Am gingerly and limped it home. He kept it in first gear the whole way, and they never got much over fifteen miles per hour. Crossing the ford was the worst. Safe once more on the opposite bank, they all piled out and pumped the hissing tires full of air for the second time.

Just after dawn, a battered Ford truck pulled over and the driver gave them a tow to the outskirts of the city. He let them off at one of the pastel-colored adobe houses. A woman in a terrycloth robe let them in. She told them her name was Maria, and then left them in the kitchen with a stack of cold tortillas and a pot of fresh coffee.

They could hear her banging around in the yard while they ate, working on the car, but neither Poison, for all his sullen suspicions, nor Jet, for all his protectiveness of the Trans Am, got up to check on her progress. After he'd eaten, Kobra rose silently and went out onto the porch to smoke. Reluctantly, Ghoul followed him out. He couldn't take the goddamn domesticity.

Maria had changed out of her robe and into a pair of coveralls. She had the Trans Am up on a jack and was prying off one of the mangled tires, working steadily and without haste. A cloud of gray dust appeared on the horizon, and Ghoul watched it creepy slowly closer. When he glanced over at him, he realized that Kobra was watching it too.

A creaking, ancient Dodge truck pulled into the yard. Maria looked up, shielding her eyes against the rising sun. The Dodge stopped with its driver's side door facing the porch. The passenger door swung haltingly, laboriously open for a moment, and then banged shut again. Maria yawned behind her hand, and went back to work. The Dodge pulled out, and when the dust it kicked up had settled, Grace was left standing in the middle of the yard.

"Kid…" Ghoul didn't know how long Jet had been standing there in the doorway, but when he caught sight of Grace he bounded forward, off the porch, and knelt down opposite her. Ghoul could see them talking, but he couldn't hear what they said.

Kobra stabbed out his cigarette and went inside with the long-suffering look of a man who is forced to watch other people humiliate themselves.

Out in the yard, Grace broke away from Jet and started toward the house. Her gaze was steady, fixed straight ahead, but she did not even seem to notice Ghoul standing there. She swept past him, Jet trailing in her wake.

"She wants to talk to Poison," he said to Ghoul, and then he followed her inside.

Ghoul stayed out of it for as long as he could. He was exhausted, and sore, and tired of people deciding his next move for him. He felt like an actor who had forgotten his blocking, and who had never known his lines. But, in the end, he couldn't stand not knowing. He went back inside, where he found Grace and Poison facing each other across the kitchen table. She was eating a rolled up tortilla; she finished it in two big bites, with a grim determination that Ghoul recognized at once as the mark of a person who had been without food for a couple of days. Poison was sipping the cold dregs of a cup of coffee. On the table between them, was a stack of crumpled twenty-dollar bills.

"This young lady says she is coming with us," Poison said. Though he did not look up, Ghoul knew that the words were intended for him, to catch him up to the rest of the class.

"I want to go to the Zones," Grace said quietly. "There's something I need to do up there."

Poison set down his coffee cup. "Who told you that we were here?"

"Nobody," Grace said. "I just knew you were going to lose the suitcase like a big clueless idiot, so I knew you'd be here."

"I don't believe that."

"Poison, lay off," Ghoul said. He was surprised that, for once, he'd said it before Jet had.

"We can't take care of a child," Poison said. "We have no business attempting such a thing."

Grace sulked, and tore into another tortilla. "I bought you the money El owed you. He doesn't know that you screwed up yet, but when he finds out he's going to be mad. He has a lot of mean friends, you know. Some of them are a lot meaner than you, even."

Poison reached out and picked him the stack of bills. Folding them over once neatly, he handed them back to the girl. "Our services are no longer for sale."

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

They all looked up at the words. Kobra was standing in the doorway watching, though Ghoul had no idea how long he had been there, how much he had heard. He stepped forward, and snatched the wad of money out of Poison's hand.

"She's a little kid, you bunch of selfish assholes," he said quietly. "She doesn't have anyone else. At least, if she's with us, she won't end up selling it by the time she's thirteen."

Poison's eyes narrowed. "Your opinion on the matter is irrelevant."

"He's right, though," Ghoul heard himself say. He cleared his throat; his voice was suddenly very hoarse. "Being with us is better than snapped up by some asshole to fight some stupid war."

"And it's better than being alone," Jet said. "As bad as we are, I hope we're still better than that."

Poison glanced between them dispassionately. A crease had appeared in his forehead, right where his eyebrows came together. It was the only outward sign that he was annoyed by their sudden coup. At last, he put out his gloved hand to Kobra, who set the money in his palm. Poison folded the bills over and slipped them in his pocket, accepting them, and the matter was decided.


	18. Chapter 18

Chapter 7

Maria found three tires to fit the Trans Am in one of the overflowing sheds out behind the house, but she was short a forth. She handed the keys to her truck over to a skinny teenage kid who was hanging around the place, and he drove it into the city to shop around for the part.

Everyone was on edge, even Grace, though she was better at hiding it than the four grown men in whose care she had abruptly found herself. They all hung around Maria's place for a while, smoking and snapping at one another. The sun was high and the heat had begun to become intolerable. As near as Ghoul could tell, it had been close to thirty hours since any of them had gotten any sleep at all.

Ghoul knew that what had happened last night with the Dagnys had been a bad mistake, but he could not help but think that he had never felt closer to the others than he had at that moment, when they were all getting their asses thoroughly kicked. They were a team, he thought bleakly, and they must have been a good one to hang together through that humiliation. Now, however, the danger had passed and so had the sense of camaraderie. Kobra was back to being an asshole, and Jet was back to being a nag, and Poison was once more acting like he'd never given a shit about anything in his life.

It was enough to make you want to puke, Ghoul thought. It was enough to make you hate that you had to have other people around at all. Without telling anyone that he was leaving, Ghoul slipped out the back door and into the desert.

They weren't that far inland. Ghoul followed the smell of salt until he found the ocean. The beach was just a thin strip of gravel, slimy with seafoam and decaying kelp. Ghoul decided he liked it better than the tourist beaches, because it had always been lonely and neglected like this.

By the time Poison found him, the sun was already low in the sky, just crossing the boundary between afternoon and evening. Ghoul had seen him coming from a long way off, but he did not walk back to meet him. He assumed that Poison had come to fetch him, that they were all waiting on him so they could go.

What he really wanted to do was turn away and act like he hadn't seen anything, but he didn't think Poison would understand.

"Come with me," Poison said, when they were close enough to speak.

"Where?"

"You'll see."

"Why?"

"I just want to show you something."

Poison was bad about a lot of things, but he had never actually been untrustworthy. With a sigh, Ghoul followed him. They walked up the highway until a dune rose up between them and Maria's place and took the house from their sight.

"I'm glad we're alone," Poison said.

He had not meant for it to sound ominous, but to Ghoul it did, and so he said nothing.

There was no sign outside the little hotel that Poison took him to, but they found it without any trouble at all. Ghoul could not imagine when Poison had made time to look for this place, or even to ask anyone about it, but he'd clearly been planning this for some time. Ghoul watched him while he unfolded a couple of the new twenties and handed them over to the owner. His expression was immobile, unreadable. Every time Ghoul thought he had him figured out, Poison pulled something like this. He knew that he ought to resent him for it.

Poison came back to him. He was clutching a room key very tightly in one hand, but when he took Ghoul's arm with the other his touch was light, almost hesitating.

"What are you doing?" Ghoul said.

Poison didn't answer. He led Ghoul around the corner of the hotel. It was a big, square, Spanish-style building. Two stories, with a courtyard in the middle that hadn't been kept up in a long time; all the trees were dead and the fountain was broken and drained of water.

"Do Kobra and Jet know we're here?" Ghoul pressed. "Do they know you're blowing our money on... whatever this is?"

Poison stopped at one of the doors. He jabbed the key into the lock like slipping a blade under someone's ribcage. He let Ghoul go inside first. The room was small, clean, very dark. White linen curtains were pulled across the only window, and when Ghoul flipped the light switch only one of the four bulbs in the fixture hanging from the ceiling lit up. There wasn't much furniture, but a big bed stood against the far wall. Ghoul stared at it, as if he did not understand what it was.

"I remembered what you told me," Poison said quietly "This was what you wanted. This would make you happy. That's what you said, right?"

Ghoul turned around a kissed him hard to stop him from talking. Poison's lips kept moving for another moment before he realized what was happening. He set his hands lightly on Ghoul's hips and eased him back. Conscientiously, he shut the door and locked it. Then he unlocked it again.

"I can go," he said. "You can just stay here for tonight. You can do whatever you want."

"What if I want to take your clothes off?"

Poison looked at him in his bemused, serious way without saying anything. Ghoul tried to hold his eyes. He wanted Poison to know that he was making an effort, that whatever had gone wrong between them, he didn't think it was beyond fixing. But the last words he had spoken kept echoing through his head, becoming sillier and more theatrical with each repetition.

At last, he couldn't keep from laughing any longer.

Poison didn't laugh with him, but he screwed his eyes up and showed his teeth in an awkward smile. It was good enough for Ghoul; he couldn't even remember the last time he had seen him amused. He reached past Poison's hip and snapped the lock shut.

"There's a shower," Poison said. "If you'd like to use it first."

Ghoul laughed again, but this time with an edge to it. No one knew how to kill the mood quite like Poison did. But then again, a chance at a real shower, with hot water and everything, didn't exactly come along every day. Even back in Battery City, the safe houses where the pipes worked like they were supposed to had been few and far between. Since they'd come to the desert, there hadn't even been that. Water was too precious to waste on bathing. Ghoul knew he must have smelled pretty bad by now – that they all must have – but it had been months since he'd noticed it at all.

"Do you—do you mind?" he asked quietly.

"I would not take offence," Poison said.

Feeling his face flush, Ghoul slipped out of Poison's arms. This whole business had the taint of guilt to it, of shame, as if he were getting away with something he had not earned. He slipped off quickly, without looking back, as if he were afraid that Poison would change his mind and take it all away again.

The bathroom was not much bigger than a closet, and all lacquered in white tile. Ghoul massaged the wall until he found the light switch, and flipped it on. A long time had passed since he'd been anywhere with regular power, but he hadn't really missed it and he didn't dread the idea of going back to living without. They could have this night together, he and Poison, but it would exist outside of the continuum of their normal lives. It would remain an afterthought, a scratched chapter in the epic story of the wasteland.

It took a while tinkering with the knobs to get the water the right temperature. Once he had it, Ghoul stripped off his clothes quickly and got in before anything could go wrong. At first, it seemed he could feel each individual drop of water, a thousand tiny not-unpleasant needles pricking against his skin, but that sensation quickly faded, blurring together into a steady, pulsing torrent.

The water swirling around his ankles ran black, then gray, then finally clear. Ghoul felt like he'd shed a couple of layers of skin, scraped them off like a snake rubbing itself against a rock. His throat seized, and a hot bubble of agony expanded in his chest. He was crying, he realized with numb horror. His eyes burned with tears, and his breath kept coming in hitching gulps, three or four of them in quick succession every time he tried to inhale. He fell forward and his head hit the shower wall with a solid thump. It seemed he had an inexhaustible reservoir of tears, and he stayed like that for a long time, letting the cool tile soothe his burning face and the hot spray of the shower wash over the rest of him.

After a while, Poison came into the bathroom. Ghoul didn't look up when he pulled the shower curtain back and got in. "I was afraid you were using all the hot water," he said. "I thought I wouldn't mind, but I guess I did."

"It's all right," Ghoul told the wall. He felt Poison's hand slide up his back, and he turned around to face him. Poison didn't seem to notice that he had been crying, though Ghoul supposed his eyes must have looked pretty red. He drew him back, under the water. "It feels good, right?"

"Yes, it does."

Ghoul rubbed his cheek against Poison's shoulder. He could feel the sharp edge of his collarbone, the slats of his ribs. He'd lost a lot of weight since they had come out here; both of them had.

"You know," Ghoul said. "This is the first time I've seen you naked."

"So it is." Poison lowered his head, and his wet hair flopped over his face. "I wish it didn't always have to be like this. Every time we're together, it feels like we're doing something wrong. It's like we're taking something that doesn't belong to us. I wish I could do more for you. If I went back to my father, then maybe—"

"Don't," Ghoul said. "I know that's not what you want. And even if it was, then what? It's not like you could bring me home to meet your parents and we could all just pretend that none of this ever happened, right?"

"I don't have parents," Poison said. "I only have him."

"Fuck him." Ghoul stroked Poison's hair back so he could see his eyes. They were unfocused, staring blindly at the wall. "You've got me. And I love you."

"I…" Poison lifted his head slowly. He stammered a little, like he was trying out several words before he settled on the one he really wanted. It wasn't like him at all. "I feel the same way."

Ghoul laughed. "Poison, you dork."

Poison's mouth turned up into a wary, halting smile. "I love you too."

It took a second for it to sink in, but when it did Ghoul's heart leapt. He had been too cautious to actually think those simple, stupid words would change anything. But they did.

"That's more like it," he said, and made a grab for Poison's wrists. They struggled a little under the water, and Ghoul ended up with his back against the wall, pinned under Poison's weight. Right where he had expected he'd end up, and right where he wanted to be.

Poison bent and kissed him. When Ghoul pressed his hips up against him, he could feel Poison's cock, already halfway hard. "Have you ever, you know, done it in the shower before?"

"Once or twice. Why do you ask?"

"Is it nice?"

"Anywhere is nice with you."

Ghoul looked down to hide the blush that came over his cheeks. Poison brushed his lips over his temple. "Let me take you to bed."

"Wait." Ghoul gave him a nudge with his hip, and Poison let him go. "I want to wash my clothes out."

He got out of the shower, grabbing a towel and cinching it around his waist. When he glanced back and saw the look on Poison's face, he laughed. "Come on, I haven't had clean underwear in like two weeks. We basically never get a chance like this. Since when am I the practical one?"

"And since when am I the romantic one?" Poison said. He stepped out from under the water, not bothering with a towel. He really did look good naked, Ghoul thought. Hard living didn't seem to have dome much damage to his pale skin or the delicate arrangement of his limbs.

While Poison went out to turn down the bed, Ghoul collected the two piles of their discarded clothes. They'd left a black ring around the tub, which he did his best to avoid as he rinsed everything out. He was very conscientious, very thorough; he didn't rush at all. He remembered the first time he and Poison had fucked - that rough, hard, desperate coupling in near-silence on the concrete floor of Poison's cell – and he was ashamed that he no longer felt the same frantic desire. They had both changed too much. There was no going back now.

Ghoul hung his jeans up on the showerhead to dry, and followed Poison out. Poison had already turned off the lights, and Ghoul's eyes were slow to adjust. He dropped his towel and groped his way over to the bed. When he was close enough, Poison took his hand and guided him down beside him. The mattress squeaked beneath his weight.

"This is nice," he said. Poison's lips were exploring his shoulder, the hollow of his collarbone, the bend of his neck. Ghoul laughed. "Don't you think this is nice?"

"This is nice," Poison confirmed. He drew Ghoul around into a kiss.

Everything else fell away. Everything else ceased to matter. At last, they were alone together, but neither of them was really there at all. They had become hands, lips, murmured words and harsh breaths. All the extraneous worries and jealousies and fears burned away, leaving only that which was tactile, immediate, necessary.

And Ghoul felt it again, the old familiar sense of urgency, coursing through him, surging out into him with every pulse of his heart. The need to run, to run forever, and see where he ended up.

Afterwards, they lay a little apart from each other, on opposite sides of the bed. Ghoul could hear the ocean, very faint and far away. It was cold in the little room, but he was soaked with sweat. He slid his palm across the sheets, worn soft and downy from many washings, until he found Poison's hand, and then he clutched it tight.

When Poison began to speak, it was in hesitant and fitful bursts, too fragmentary and disjointed to be a proper story. He seemed to feel that there was something here, something he wanted Ghoul to know or understand, and with time and with luck he might happen upon it.

Ghoul said nothing. He knew that Poison did not want his pity or his sympathy; he only wanted him to listen while he talked. About Better Living, about his father. About the lab where he had been created and the dozens of failures that had come before him. About everything he'd had, and everything that had been taken from him, and everything he had willingly surrendered. And finally, about the things that had been done, by him, for him, to him, all to make him stronger and crueler and more efficiently merciless.

He fell silent at last. Ghoul let a full minute go by before he turned over on his side to face him.

"Poison," he said, and touched his cheek. His skin felt very cold, like marble or glass.

"Yes?"

Ghoul hesitated. He hadn't thought Poison would actually expect him to say something. "You know, I'm here. If you ever need me."

"I do know that. Thank you." He caught Ghoul's hand and dragged it around to his lips. "Earlier, when you said that you loved me, I knew at once that you meant it. My father never said anything like that to me. Even when he came to me at night, when he did those things, I thought, maybe I could have forgiven him, if he'd only told me it was because he loved me. But he would not have made a mistake like that. He wanted me to know my place. I wasn't even worth the trouble of lying to."

"He's a bad person," Ghoul said. "I'm sorry that there isn't a better explanation than that. He's bad, and he tried to make you like he is, but you're not. He hurt you, but you're free of him now, and one day he'll be dead. That's the best any of us can hope for."

Poison turned slowly to face him. Behind Ghoul's hand, he was smiling. "You make me feel better."

"That's good."

After that, there was nothing left to say. Ghoul lay awake for a long time, and he did not know whether Poison was asleep or not. Eventually, the line between consciousness and oblivion became blurry and porous. And he no longer knew himself which side of it he was on.

* * *

At that moment in the wasteland, Prester John was reading by moonlight a passage from Job that he knew by heart. Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there. The Bible was old. It had belonged to the person he had once called sister, before he had been Called from that life.

The binding was dry and cracked from the heat. Sometimes the pages came loose in Prester John's hands. The Lord has given and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.

A coyote screamed out in the dunes. It sounded very near. Prester John looked up sharply. His heart was pounding, and his mouth tasted like metal. It was a full five seconds before he realized he was afraid.

He laughed, and went back to his reading. He had lost his place. Rather than try to find it again, he went, calmly and without frustration, back to the beginning: There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright.

* * *

And at that moment in Battery City, the Manskinner was awake in the basement of a condemned building near Better Living Laboratory. He did not feel tired, though he had not slept in over 24 hours. He was not hungry, though he couldn't remember the last time he'd eaten. At ten minutes past midnight, he would climb out onto the street and, with steady hands, line the road with mines. At 12:30, if his intelligence was correct, a transport carrying new troops would leave the Lab and make its way towards Better Living Towers.

He would hear the explosion, but he would not see it. He would already be far away.

If things had been different, it was the kind of mission he might have entrusted to Frank. But Frank had been gone for months now, and the Manskinner rarely thought of him anymore. Until he heard differently, he would assume that he was alive and that he was doing what he wanted.

The Manskinner was disappointed, but he was not angry. He could not have been angry even if he had wanted to, for he had loved Frank more than all the rest of them. Because he had saved him, and he had raised him, and, until he ran out, he had been able to point to him and say, Look. It wasn't a waste. It was not all for nothing.

* * *

At that moment in the wasteland, the Dagnys were splitting up the take from the suitcase they had delivered the night before. Rockefeller divvied it up to the last dollar, rewarding each of them in proportion to their contribution.

She knew that the transmission in Astor's bike was about to drop out, but she didn't care. This was the way it was in her Utopia, built upon suitcases of shitty impure drugs and the dirty money of the Colorado Compound.

* * *

At that moment, Grace crept out the backdoor and shut it silently behind here and stood without moving, without even breathing, until she had counted to ten.

No sound came from inside. No one had noticed her go.

Feeling her way with her hands, she slipped off the edge of the porch and crouched in the shadow of the house. She pulled a tattered handkerchief out of the pocket of her jacket. There were three tortillas rolled up inside, cold now and beginning to turn stale around the edges.

Grace ate them all, one after another, not tasting a thing but feeling the big unchewed lumps moving down her insides.

She thought, how nice it would be to die and become a ghost. La Llorona. Needing nothing, noticed by no one.

* * *

At that moment somewhere outside of Juarez, El Chupacabra was sitting in a bar with a known member of one of the Baja cartels. He had just confessed to losing the Salton shipment. The cartel man laughed and patted his shoulder. They leisurely finished their beer, and when El got up to leave the cartel man pulled out a switchblade and casually murdered him.

* * *

And at that moment in the wasteland, Dr. Death was wrapping up the broadcast day. He tried, as always, to think of what they would have said back in school, something profound and comforting and true. But all that came to mind were sentimental clichés.

He poured a half inch of whiskey into the dirty pint glass at his elbow and drank it down without tasting it, without even feeling it burn. He switched off the transmitter and sat for a full minute, listening to the dead air hum in his ears.

When shall I be as the swallow? Datta. Dayadhvan. Damyata. Shanti, shanti, shanti.

* * *

At that moment, Crow Jane was on her hands and knees, searching underneath the generator for a lost screwdriver. She had heard the broadcast end, and come out here to take down the antenna. She was tired and her shoulders ached; after the heat of the day, the night seemed very cold. When Jane had first come to the wasteland, there had been a lot of things she was afraid of but the work had never been one.

Life out here was not hard for them in any appreciable way. The hours were short, most of their needs were provided for by grateful exiles. Aside from the two daily broadcasts, there was almost never anything to do. Once, Jane had thought she would never be able to do enough for them, enough to make up for being left behind when so many others had been hauled off to Alameda Street Jail. But somehow, over the course of years and so gradually that she had not even noticed it happening, it had all become too much for her.

Too much of the same thing, over and over, day after day. Reports of death and despair flooded in from the wasteland, and flooded out again over the radio, and there was nothing she could do to change it, nothing she could do to ease the suffering of even one single person out there.

It was too late now. Too late to wonder if things could have been different, better, anything at all.

Too late, even, to wonder what it might have been like if she'd picked up a gun instead of a pen when she'd had the chance.

* * *

At that moment, Jet Star and Kobra Kid were drunk.

It had not escaped Kobra's notice that this had become a frequent occurrence for them. He couldn't pinpoint the exact moment it had gone from a matter of convenience to a private ritual, and he wasn't even sure he wanted to.

He'd never thought he'd become an alcoholic. That was for people with fewer options, fewer resources, then he had. Never thought he'd become Jet's friend either, but here he was.

"I wonder where that kid ran off to?" Jet said, but he didn't seem particularly concerned for her. It didn't look like he was about to get up and go stumbling around the place looking for her.

Thank god for that. At least there was that. It didn't take a licensed counselor to see that the last thing that kid needed was some old fucker full of tequila and good intentions fumbling around after her.

"Forget the kid," Kobra said. "Where's Poison?"

"No, forget Poison. He can take care of himself."

Kobra laughed, a loud humorless exhalation. "Your priorities are all fucked. You've forgotten how to be a father and what it's like to be a little kid."

"What would you know about that? Sometimes I think you weren't born at all. You just crawled out of the sand one day, full grown and carved out of wood."

"You're wrong about that," Kobra said. "You're really wrong. But fuck you anyway for saying it."

Jet leaned back in his chair and looked Kobra over curiously, without spite. "Sorry, kid. You know I didn't mean that. I was just…"

"You were just thinking it. And you feel like you have to say every stupid little thing that pops into your goddamn head."

"I guess you got me there, kid."

Kobra couldn't tell if he was being patronizing, but he hoped that he wasn't. He didn't want to fight with Jet; he just wanted him to sit there and soak up a little abuse. He could probably handle it. Kobra poured himself another drink, and said, "I know who I am. And I know where I came from, and I know where I'm going. And I even know the name of my father, which is one more thing than I ever asked for."

Jet sucked in a deep breath. He seemed about to say something, but at the last second he changed his mind, or he forgot. They sat in silence for a while, drinking.

"Shit," Kobra muttered. "Where the hell did Poison go anyway?"

* * *

At that moment, Maria tightened the last bolt on the last wheel of the Trans Am. She wiped her hands on a rag, wiped the wrench too. Soon, she would go in and put the kettle on and make a cup of chocolate. While the water boiled, she would sweep out all the corners to make the house ready for morning.

Four clean corners and four new tires. She felt a small, not-unwelcome swelling of pride.

* * *

At that moment in Battery City, approximately a million and a half sovereign citizens were blamelessly, dreamlessly asleep under Korse's watchful eye.

Korse almost never slept anymore. He needed only two or three hours a night. More than that, and he started to lose his edge. He had not left Better Living Towers in months, and he knew that his driver no longer came for him at the end of the day. At night, he wandered the dark, uniform halls until he inevitably found his way to the Department of Interior Security.

Seven thousand cameras mounted on street corners throughout the city, all of them broadcasting back to a single room. Korse sat amongst the feeds and watched the city which both repulsed and compelled him.

He saw a hundred transgressions committed in every quarter of the city, but he did nothing. It made him feel very indulgent and merciful. Things could stay this way a little longer, until Gerard returned to Battery City. Then, all hell was going to break loose.


End file.
